Hope Floats

Like so many others, I am still riding the winds of change. It came in like a gentle breeze blowing softly the word ‘Hope’. At the beginning of this election I was a Clinton fan. I respect her intellectual strength, her resilience, her determination in the face of adversity, her experience in politics, the work she does, and honestly wanted to usher in a time where females are in the lead. I needed to see and feel something different and had little faith in some of the male leadership I was seeing.

When I walked into the booth to caste my vote in the primary I began struggling with the issue of choice. By now Clinton had said a few things that had me wiggling in my seat trying to sit comfortably.

However when the time came to fill in the ballot it was the whisper of ‘Hope” that I heard floating in my ear. So I voted for hope. Hope has been sinking in this country for so long that it was time that we all reached into the water of despair and resuscitated it. With every chant, cry and song we breathed a ‘yes we can’ into hope. And the ‘we’ became larger them many of us could have imagined and with one strong breathe we created a movement for change. We not only revived hope but we also filled our lungs with it. Hope not only floats it walks with us making the possibility of change an absolute. Let us now begin the work.

The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we used when we crated the problem                                                                                                                     Albert Einstein

  Hi, I’m sending a shout out into cyberspace and I’m not sure if anyone is listening and I’m not sure if it matters. This blog is my personnel soapbox that I will step onto to vent, praise, analyze and just discuss my world as an Urban Tech Teacher.

       If you are a teacher then as most of your family and friends know by now teaching is not a 9-5 job. Most of my friends have listened as I vented my attempts at dealing with a difficult child, manage what appeared to be an unmanageable classroom, cried for the difficulty in my students lives, hugged them ,laughed with them, defended them, reprimand them praise their brilliance but most of all love them.  The children that I teach have been my greatest teachers and for that, I will forever be grateful.

      Teaching was not my first career path I chose it when the doors were open and the educational system courted retired employees and people like myslelf who wanted to change careers.  I stand as both an outsider and insider to this profession.

       As an outsider, I was an attentive involved parent, band mom, raising funds, and volunteering in the cafeteria.  I felt I tried to stay on top of homework, attended all parent teacher conference, and attended mostly every field trip. I have seen my daughter through elementary, middle school, high school, college, and graduate school and I now listen as she maps out her decision for a doctorate and law degree.  When you are in the mist of raising children, it does not always provide opportunities for reflection.I am on  what I consider as the ‘other side’ of parenting, there are moments that you miss and realize that time has flown by and if you could do it again what a difference, you could make. 

The truth is, you can only know what you know at the time, and you try to make the best decision and hope it was the right one.

      I stand now as an insider and on the shoulders of so many tireless; teachers who came before, wanting to impart an enthusiasm for learning and a curiosity for life.  I am both proud at being a teacher and disappointed that we live in a society that does not value or appreciate what it is we do. So come stand around and listen as I vent,laugh and sometimes cry out my thoughts of being an Urban Tech Teacher