It’s been so long since I wrote, that I forgot my own website address.
It’s not that there haven’t been things to share, it’s more that I don’t know where to begin. That I have lived back home in Denmark for four years now, and been a teacher here for nearly three, and yet still feel like Bambi on ice. Trying to find my footing but knowing that I am more than likely spinning in circles and sliding farther away from my intended target.
So instead of trying to catch anyone up, don’t even know if there is anyone to catch up here, I am simply beginning again.
Hello and welcome to my thoughts about teaching, about life, about being a mom, a woman and living in this world right now with all its complications and wonders.
I am supposed to be the one that teaches children to read and write in my first grade classes. This is a burden I never wanted to have and yet the puzzle of trying to make the pieces click into place, of trying to help children find their way into story, and place their stories into the world, is one I relish. Will this little thing work? What if we do this? Try this? Stop this?
My students are both willing and unwilling participants; while happy to be in school still, they don’t get to choose that they should learn how to read or write. Like so many other things, that choice has been made for them.
But how we do it, together, that can be rife with choices. Some we are exploring cautiously, some we throw ourselves into just happy to try something new.
There is so much we can do together that I feel paralyzed at times. The weight of this wondrous world of literacy so heavy that I am not sure of what is best, what to do, what to keep. Imposter syndrome at its finest.
Because am I enough for everyone? Probably not. But can I show up and try my best, yes. Can I plan something every day that is one part of an expansive path that will expand these readers and authors? Can I teach strategies, offer practice, and pull them into the magic of what it means to read and write and leave the door so wide that even the most cautious of children can bumble through. Yes. Always yes.
I can observe, and tweak, and dream, and wonder and try. I can try again when it didn’t work. I can offer myself grace when it feels like too much to do and not enough me.
Because the power we have to experiment and pilot cannot be removed when we sit in our classrooms. We are allowed to try again again and again.
Because that’s really all this great big thing is. Whether it be life or teaching. An invitation to show up every day and try again. To leave knowing that you tried something. To leave in a way that makes you want to come back.
So I may not always know what I am doing, or even how to do something well, but I know how to show up. And for now, that’s going to be good enough.