sometimes i hate the moutains

i know admitting that is a huge faux pas around this neck of the woods, but sometimes they just get in the way. they kind of laugh at you like they know they are insurmountable. on days when i need a breather, sometimes they close in around me and i feel claustrophobic knowing that in an afternoon's time i will be unable to cross over the mountains and back.

this is why i love the ocean. you can stand in the sand and look out across the water imagining everything that falls beyond the horizon. when you look at the mountains, they are all there is to the horizon.

makes me wonder why so often we try to move mountains. maybe they are there to keep us contained. keep us from wildly escaping into an unknown abyss. should every wall fall, every mountain be moved? do boundaries and borders have their place in nature, life, education?

i know that when i'm walking down the hallway singing journey, it's a good day...

there is really no logical reason why at 9:30am this morning i was walking down the hallway of rocky mountain high school singing a little 'journey' with a big ol smile on my face. i fell asleep around 1:30am, woke up around 6:00am, headed off to teach sans-caffeine, sans-weather appropriate clothing, sans-any idea as to what i was to be doing today, and none of this seemed to get in the way of my happiness as i left first period US Lit and Humanities inspired and alive.

not to mention there is really no logical reason as to why i have this affinity for steve perry, a man who was making music well before my time. but there is belief in his voice (and in his eyes, just look at them) that ceases to inspire me, make me happy, make me want to sing at the top of my lungs walking down a high school hallway (fortunately this was during a passing period and so i doubt passing students could make out my horrible butchering of steve perry's lyrics).

i was riding a high. i imagine this high began sometime last night, carried through to my dreams, was there to greet me when i awoke, and was encouraged by the 31 students smiling at me as i walked into the classroom this morning smiling at them. happiness can be contagious. and when we are happy, we are open, and this openness makes us feel alive - we don't grow simply by sleepwalking. we need to wake up our students.

i adore the fall. the change. the color. this morning as i got into my car to head to rocky, there was fall in the trees, but winter in the air. the chill was anything but paralyzing. it was entirely awakening. before i fell asleep last night, i told myself that winter would soon be on its way, and i meditated on the magic that it carries along with it. christmas is no doubt part, but there is something else. i think it is in the chill.

i imagined i had a snow globe resting on my bed stand. inside of it was everything that inspires me. we can let that inspiration be paralyzed by the winter chill, or we can shake it up a bit, let the chill awaken the magic and movement in the air. and so before i fell asleep last night, i gave my globe a little shake - woke up inspired and singing some 'journey,' and passed that spirit onto my students.

what's inside your snow globe? and when was the last time you gave it a good shake?

what are you waiting for...

why i love rainy days...

...for the same reason i love taking the rowboat out onto the lake. ahhh, my life's metronome. there is always movement in water, but a movement that never really seems to get the best of you. movement that paces you always appropriately, never negligently. so i'm sitting here in my room, with the window open, listening to the steady flow of rain outside sometimes hard and heavy, sometimes delicately delightful, but always moving - and i feel relaxed. i feel like reading, watching an old familiar movie, drinking warmth, wearing comfort found in an aged sweatshirt. trying to ignore the interruptions outside my bedroom door complaining of how the rain complicates the natural unfolding of the days events.

and i completely disagree.

maybe it is that when we are given a moment to let things slow down, we are the cause of complication in our efforts to work against what really is the natural flow.

so when i go fishing, i don't like encourage complication by the expectation of the catch. it is much nicer to row out a ways, pull in the oars, and let the lake carry you as it wishes. there is a reason why they have those nice little fishing rod holders on the sides of boats - man, take advantage of those things. let the water do the work for you. listen to the rain.

last thursday i taught a lesson on Emerson's Nature. the first few minutes i struggled to work against the natural movement in the classroom (i was most definitely NOT listening to the rain ha), trying to get my students where i wanted them to be - but then realized in doing so, i was inhibiting their true sense of BEing in that moment (which, ironically, was exactly what i didn't want to do...so not emersonian). so i took a breather, and started over. and the remainder of the time, we meditated. we all traveled to our happy places and it was FANTASTIC! afterwards, my mentor teacher gave me some important feedback:

"I have a teacher friend who swears by keeping her students multitasking. But I disagree. Give them some time to focus on one thing. This may mean that they sometimes get off task, but that's when you bring them back or move on."

so when i took the time to listen to the movement in the room and within/between students, i found they did a better job at listening to me as well. we were back on the same page moving in the same direction. a direction in part motivated by me, but more so motivated by the collective energy in the room.

oh how i love sharing the flow.

recycling emotions through revisitations

having recently returned from a happy weekend with my dad and my little brother listening to some blues down in telluride, i have spent the last day or so in a dull daydream coming down from a familiarity high. daydreams of old songs with new associations carrying familiar feelings of complete happiness. yes, i would say and did say, that everything my weekend had encompassed was colored by such a vivid shade of blue. this blue was vibrant, fun even, with a lingering sense of sadness. this sadness, of course, was in the coming down. the exposure of the real through the familiar.

this afternoon i sat in a literature class still daydreaming in shades of blue through emotions that were only loosely attached to the story we were discussing. it was a 77 page story; the first few pages introduced a group of young boys who had discovered a dead body in a river. this body was still trapped in the car, still trapped in the river; meanwhile i was trapped in emotional revisitations too familiar to allow momentary mental movement. the first revisitation was in the blue; the second in my associating the opening pages with the film, 'stand by me,'; and the third a bit more abstract.

emotional revisitation number 3 was in a dream i had had the night prior to reading the assigned story. i was with my mother (oh how the familial is familiar) and we were out for a winter stroll when we happened upon a lake that had just recently frozen over. this lake hung at the bottom of a valley where many young children stood bemusing over two large vehicles that had seemingly lost control, fell into the valley, and were now sinking into the slightly frozen lake. what followed was rather dramatic, but the short of it was that several of these children ended up in the lake as well, followed by my mom, followed by me who was somehow able to save all drowning parties.

so you can see how this recollection was also playing out as i read the story; a story which was now shaded by the blues hangover, the emotional attachment to youthful bliss, and the frozen fear of losing family. hmmm, a far cry from where the story was heading.

so my questions are as follow. do we get to a point where we become comfortable with recycling emotions through these recollections and revisitations of old feelings accompanying new associations? do we do this in education? how about through reader response? or recycled role-playing? there is an element of ease and comfort in the recycling...enough to open you up to the growing process, but can we solely grow through fun alone? if so, why do we have growing pains?

you could say that what i am experiencing now is somewhat painful. painful in the let down that all that is fun and familiar doesn't always yield desired growth. of course i am not sold on this idea, because i can't get enough of the blues no matter how limiting a 1-4-5 can be.

mental multitasking

upon waking this morning, i thought, 'what would be a better way to start off the day than with a nice brisk bike ride along the poudre.' so i bundled up bright and early and hit the trail with my educational counterpart, let's call him Yves.

the hope was to pace my day based on a nice casual ride; however, i found myself thinking and talking frantically while biking hurriedly. missing stop signs, dodging cars. meanwhile, yves kept quiet...took his time. maintained a steady strong pace, while i mentally meandered through my 'evolutionary anxieties.'

we started talking about bridges. in light of this summer's bridge catastrophe in minnesota, the following appeared in a cbs news article online:

"Steel corrosion on bridges is still a major concern. Infrastructure experts worry that thousands of American bridges are dangerously outdated and overburdened. In 2006, approximately one-fifth of interstate bridges were rated as deficient, either structurally deficient or obsolete.

Overall, one-quarter of all bridges in the U.S. are considered structurally deficient, and 80,000 bridges across the country need some sort of reconstruction or rebuilding."

however, the pace at which things move in today's society does not allow for total reconstruction or rebuilding. so instead, we put a bandaid on the problem, and while we are in the process of applying the bandaid we are already thinking about what groceries we need to purchase for dinner, whose phone calls we need to return. we are mental multitasking and in doing so forgetting to clean the wound and properly assess the problem.

in today's world we often assume that what we 'know to be true' is true, and we build on top of those assumptions in an effort to save time. what we need to be doing is properly assessing whether or not these truths are outdated.

we need to be CRITICAL of the foundations on which we attempt to build entire worlds of existence.

we need to FOCUS on the task at hand instead of attempting to mental multitask.

if i enjoyed my bike ride in a focused manner, i wouldn't have missed stop signs, dodged cars. my day would have started out at a 'slow and steady' pace. tea instead of coffee, if you will.

so in today's classroom where we are aware that students are much more capable of multitasking, my questions are as follow: what are they missing in such a process and how do we slow this process down in order to assure their critical awareness of the structural deficiency of the bridges on which they travel? should we slow them down?

as my bike ride with yves neared its end, i felt as though i had robbed him of something because i was too busy talking through my mental multitasking at the expense of his meditated quietude. more than that, however, was that in doing so, i dangerously disconnected from my surroundings and missed out on a more enriching ride. i have spent the last several hours drinking some tea in an attempt to slow myself down, but the pace has already been set for my day and i can only hope that tomorrow i will start the day off a little slower before i completely lose myself in mental disconnect.