It's June 30th, and I have the butterflies-in-my-stomach nervous feelings that you get that week before school starts. I have also been having "the dreams." You know, the ones that happen after you have spent the summer on your own kind of schedule, where suddenly in your dreams you are late, unprepared, dressed for the pool and not school, and otherwise just generally not your best professional self. Yup, it is June 30th and I am that nervous.
I am nervous because I resigned from my job.
I didn't just resign from a job. I resigned from a job in a district at a school I really love with people I really love. After packing up my little family three years ago, and moving from New Hampshire to Chicago, where I really knew nobody, this place I am leaving became home, the people my family. For three years I worked as the gifted and talented services coordinator for their junior high school. I loved it. Did I mention I loved it there? And I just resigned.
Why, why, why would I do this? Because I had to. No, not like I was caught carrying armfuls of basketballs to my car in the middle of the night to sell online and I had to resign kind of resign, I had to resign because I found the kind of job that makes me have nervous butterfly feelings in June when I don't start until August. I found the kind of job where I can't stop thinking about how exciting it is, or how amazing these people I'm going to work with are. I found a place that is really talking about innovation and revolution, and has implemented a very progressive kind of leadership, an I want to go out and do cartwheels in my front yard kind of job.
For that kind of job you sometimes have to leave home. I think about a really awesome social studies teacher I used to work with who gave me motherhood advice when I was getting ready to have my first daughter. She had three, and I was watching her coordinate summer travel and college schedules for her kids. She and I met right after she had sent her middle daughter to Australia. I was hormonal. "Aren't you sad?" I remember saying to her. She wasn't. "Roots and wings," she explained, "I want them all to have both."
Change is hard. But, I have built the foundation of my own educational philosophy on the idea of getting kids to learn by tapping into what excites them, what makes them want to have 8,000 browser windows open because they can't stop researching, what keeps them up at night thinking. I have time and time again talked about growth mindsets, and problem solving, and true passionate learning. How could I not demand that of myself and for myself as well?
I am nervous because I resigned from my job.
I didn't just resign from a job. I resigned from a job in a district at a school I really love with people I really love. After packing up my little family three years ago, and moving from New Hampshire to Chicago, where I really knew nobody, this place I am leaving became home, the people my family. For three years I worked as the gifted and talented services coordinator for their junior high school. I loved it. Did I mention I loved it there? And I just resigned.
Why, why, why would I do this? Because I had to. No, not like I was caught carrying armfuls of basketballs to my car in the middle of the night to sell online and I had to resign kind of resign, I had to resign because I found the kind of job that makes me have nervous butterfly feelings in June when I don't start until August. I found the kind of job where I can't stop thinking about how exciting it is, or how amazing these people I'm going to work with are. I found a place that is really talking about innovation and revolution, and has implemented a very progressive kind of leadership, an I want to go out and do cartwheels in my front yard kind of job.
For that kind of job you sometimes have to leave home. I think about a really awesome social studies teacher I used to work with who gave me motherhood advice when I was getting ready to have my first daughter. She had three, and I was watching her coordinate summer travel and college schedules for her kids. She and I met right after she had sent her middle daughter to Australia. I was hormonal. "Aren't you sad?" I remember saying to her. She wasn't. "Roots and wings," she explained, "I want them all to have both."
Change is hard. But, I have built the foundation of my own educational philosophy on the idea of getting kids to learn by tapping into what excites them, what makes them want to have 8,000 browser windows open because they can't stop researching, what keeps them up at night thinking. I have time and time again talked about growth mindsets, and problem solving, and true passionate learning. How could I not demand that of myself and for myself as well?