back to school: the audacity of hope

Man, what a week. The first week of Back to School is always so rough. First there's the daily body shock of getting up at 5:45 am every day after two months of 7:00 am leisurely wake ups, and at least five (unbelievably relaxing) mornings of waking up as late as 9:00 am (thank you to C for watching 2 hours straight of Yo Gabba Gabbas and Bubbleguppies those 5 mornings).

Then there are the meetings--it simply wouldn't be a new school year without the meetings. One day for me was nothing but 2 long back to back meetings (though I must say: the first 3 hour meeting that particular day was a talented, most inspiring guest speaker named Dr. Dan Mulligan who made the business of teaching critical thinking skills exciting, engaging, and just all around laugh out loud fun) (and then a teacher friend who lived close to the speaker venue threw a lunch party that started with chicken salad sandwiches and ended with gooey, fudgy, chocolate-y brownies).

And then there was the moving around of furniture and the organizing of messes (what the poop was I frickin' doing back in May??) (answer: probably recuperating from school year trauma). Don't even get me started on Meet the Teacher night (which was actually not bad...except for that one incoming Kindergartner who actually pooped on one of the cafeteria's stools while daddy was filling out paperwork) (yes, real poop...and I have no idea how he got it out of his pants which remained completely poop free, along with his hands) (????) (and I was all kinds of non-judgmental. Given that I was just in that dad's position less than a month ago) (though I must note here that my child is in the beginning stages of potty training at 2 years old...not registering for Kindergarten at 5) (okay, I promise I'm done).

I know, to the non-teacher crowd, these all sound like champagne problems. Oh, poor baby. She had 10 months of trauma (in Corporate America I have 12 months). Oh poor thing. She only had two months to recuperate (in Corporate America, I only get 2 weeks). Yeah, I hear ya. But there are things I have to deal with that no non-teacher out there in the world could even possibly imagine having to deal with...couldn't even psychologically prepare for. And I have it easy. I don't have a classroom full of kids to contend with day in, day out--I only see mine in small groups of up to 11 for 4o minutes at a time, 6 times a day. I could tell you classroom teacher stories that would set your hair on fire. Make your innards explode. Teaching ain't for the weak, yo.

Anyway. Getting back to the happy: what I love most about this time of the school year is its absolute audacity of hope. Everything is clean and new, and shiny shiny shiny. You've got big plans, starry-eyed dreams, and you can actually leave campus to eat lunch...with other adults. It's just like being real people, working in the real world. Yeah, our bodies are angry at us for making them get up so early, but they eventually kind of just grumble and give in around, say, 8:30 (or whenever we've had our coffee) because, hello, they did just get TWO months to recoup (Month 1: Psychological Detox, Month 2: Psychological Boot Camp for next school year). Or maybe just two weeks if summer school was part of your summer equation.

But whatever. That last group of kids is gone, and we have fresh meat to work with. And we haven't even gotten to know the fresh meat yet, so there's still hope. We have time, and lots (and lots) of hope.

It's really the calm before the storm.

So one of the things that came across my desk (actually across my eyes, in a meeting) was the following video. I was going to write this big ol' commentary/preamble before presenting (ha, not that I haven't just done that), but I don't want to get off on a tangent (ha! again) before subjecting you to the magic of this speaker's message. I'll do my commentary/preamble/tangent tomorrow. For today, I would just like you to watch this (if you have time--it's about 19 minutes long), and really think about what it means to be part of a family, a culture, a country, a species.

The speaker is author Chimamanda Adichie, and she shares a really powerful message about what it means to be human and how we're all in this fight together: