A New Year, A New You

A New Year, Allowing for Change ??

A New Year, Opening to Possibility ??

Here Go ‘Round Again ??

Trying to think of a catchy title is a little off-putting. I’ve been fortunate enough to take a couple weeks off, post-holiday season. It’s been quite lovely. So nice, in fact, that getting back to the keyboard feels rusty.

Maybe you feel like that too? Or maybe you love being back to your routine, your pattern?

Where ever you are on that range of possibility, are you diving into it with your full heart? Anything less than your heart — all of it — is what creates the twinge of pain, uncertainty, or doubt. “Do I have to?” might be the plaintive whisper from the deep part of yourself.

This inquiry is worth investigating. In fact, the whisper arrives in the knowing part of you that gently inclines her head, nodding “Yes, you must.”

Of course, if there is no whisper, or if you simply are not aware of it, then press on! Do what you’re doing. Be happy groovin’ along, doing your best day after day. And find goodness therein, contentment in the the pattern and the continuity.

But, just but…

If any little niggling escapes the cage of your “happiness”, read on.

Sometimes we just go along to get along. We stuff the inner plea, the whining, the insistent nagging from our inner self because we can’t listen. (Not that we can’t hear, but that we can’t listen.) We don’t have time. We don’t have resources. We don’t know. We wouldn’t know what to do if we did listen.

But yet, you do know.

Somewhere — deep in there maybe, maybe just a scratch beneath the surface — you do know.

Some might declare that it’s your birthright to know. Some might just glance at you out of the corner of their eye, thinking you foolish if you need to justify your knowing. And some might never understand what you mean, the inner knowing as mysterious to the them as the changing colors of the sky as she shifts and sifts at sunset from blue to pink to molten gold.

Does any of this have anything to do with the education world? With teaching? With learning?

Well, yes. Sort of.

And yes, most certainly.

How so?

You teach who you are.

If you don’t know who you are, if you aren’t comfortable with yourself at the deepest most quiet level, then what do you teach? How do you deliver your content? How do you hope to positively impact your students? How do you engage them with the content?

Knowing who you are comes from listening on the inside.

As Dr. Daniel Siegel teaches us in his book Brainstorm, our intuition is the 3rd natural stage of adolescent brain development (after the risk-taking stage and then the “gist” thinking, or big picture stage.) Intuition is a natural, innate stage of our brain’s developing capacity for knowledge and the application of it!

And yet, how many of us every really enjoyed formal instruction on cultivating our intuition? For most of us, it was actively quashed, shoved deep under the rug so as to maintain the rote delivery and processing of forced educational content. No one ever asked, “How does that piece of information sit with you?” Or “What does your gut say about that?” Or “How might you benefit on a deeper level from this knowledge?”

Wouldn’t it be quite interesting to do that now…to dissect a piece of literature, Lord of the Flies, for example, asking your students “What does your gut say about the death of Simon?” Or “Why was Simon’s inner knowing portrayed as mystical, casting him as an outsider, or a loner?” “Why do you think Golding had him killed in the story?”

This tale is a good example of how our inner wisdom or vision has been shunned, shut down, and silenced. With the death of Simon in Lord of the Flies, we can extrapolate that our own abstract knowing, that which does not stem from logic and reason, is fated for a similar end.

And in fact, it seems that education has been a major facilitator in the silencing of our inner knowing. Lord of the Flies was published in 1954. Since that time, in almost 70 years, we have been played, and Simon was a harbinger of that silencing of our intuition.

How often do you teach by your intuition?

What does that even mean? Have you ever even considered that?

Most of us will answer, “No. I’ve never considered that.”

And — I might imagine that you have indeed, taught from your intuition.

In those glorious moments when your students are engaged and questioning the material, and one brave students asks THE question. A-ha! You rise to the occasion, aware in that deep part of you that this, THIS!, is indeed that learning moment. “I will capture it!”, you vow.

And from the fire of your passion, you unfold the illustrious world of your content to your students.

And they get it! You feel it. Your classroom is pulsating with the energy of comprehension. You can see your students mentally applying the content to their own lives, to the struggles they face, the challenges they are up against. You know that deep, personal meaning-making is occurring — in this moment.

You feel fulfilled and satisfied. Your desires as an educator have be accomplished. Your students know! They can apply this content, this knowledge, yes — even this wisdom — to their lives. They are changed because of it and by it. You have done this! You seized the moment and the released it to the free-flow of … intuition. Both yours and theirs.

These moments may be rare, indeed.

But they are what keep you going. They are what you strive for. They are why you plan and spend time and energy searching alternate sources of support. They are why you carefully come to know your students, inquiring into their interests and their challenges.

For when you know what interests them, you can tailor your delivery to meet them where they are. And by so doing, you engage them. And then the learning naturally occurs, almost instinctively.

And do you see how none of this, not a single particle of it, can be planned for? Cannot be scheduled and called up at 9:12 am, after the bell has rung and you’ve moved past attendance and the opening journaling activity, spiraling into the depth of your class discussion?

This is what is meant by the phrase, “You teach who you are.”

If you are alert and enthusiastic, tuned in and intuitive, you will know. You do know. And you trust that.

No one had to teach you to trust it. You just know.

And you know the joy and the freedom that comes by offering the component parts of intuitive learning to you students. You feel your dynamic classroom environment vibrate with life, with learning, with growth.

Can you be open to more moments like these? Can you be the change you want to see in your students, in classroom, in your school? Can you really know and trust your gut?

Will you?

New Year — good old intuition, coming out of hiding.

As always, thanks for being YOUTH Positive.

And may this year of 2023 unfold myriad opportunities for you to listen on the inside and to trust that knowing.

All the love there is,

Molly

P.S. If you found this useful, please share! The more happier families we have, the better off we are a a world. ❤️

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