I wish that I was posting something amazing about my physical health, but if I am being honest, teaching is absolutely kicking my butt. One of my best friends, who is also a teacher, said that teaching is like performing for 7 hours a day. It absolutely is. Every day leaves me just exhausted. It is an awesome experience, but generally speaking, when the day is over, I feel too tired to do much of anything, so my work out routine that I thought would fix itself, has just become more erratic. I have tried to do little things to help, such as parking far away from my classroom so I have to walk further, and I force myself to walk around campus to talk to people instead of always just e-mailing them, but it is certainly not the work out routine I desire. What it comes down to is defeating the exhaustion. I am getting enough sleep, and I am still eating healthy (although, I am not eating regularly enough), so I have not slipped back into these awful habits, but, at the moment, I am just sort of treading water. I am stuck on a total of 72 pounds lost in the last 17 months. Today I had planned to go to my gym and talk to a personal trainer about possibly getting personal training sessions to help me get out of this funk, but I am getting beat by an awful cold, and I stepped on something sharp last night that punctured my skin and my foot is in immense pain. I will try again later this week.
What I do want to talk about is all of this inspiration around me. Let me start with my students. Last weekend I read 130 essays about goals. My students had to pick four categories of their lives and write an essay about the goals they set for themselves in those areas. It is a wonderful assignment for them and for me because it gets them thinking about their lives and it allows me to see what they value. Many of them are working on their own physical health. Some are doing it for aesthetic reasons (teenagers lust after six packs), but are doing specifically to help them in their sports (one junior already has been accepted to a college with a swimming scholarship), and others are doing just to feel better about themselves. I have already mentioned that I told them all about my journey and many of them mentioned it in their essays. Multiple people included little asides rooting for me and encouraging me. Once football season is over the gym on campus is open 4 days a week after school, and many of my students want to get me in the gym and teach me the routines the coaches have set up for them. I think I am going to take them up on it, if only so they can see that I am actually trying. I even have a student to chastises me every day that I forget to bring my lunch, because they know that I am trying to eat better. One of the many beautiful things about teenagers is their willingness to point out when their teachers are not holding up their promises. It keeps me motivated and keeps me on my toes. I know I am going to get asked if I brought my lunch and I know the disapproving glances I will get if I forget.
I get to come home every day to a wonderful woman, this is not news to anyone, however, over the last two months, Martina has started to get incredibly serious about her own health and fitness. In July she did an insane squat challenge and stuck with it all through the month. She also started stocking our fridge with only healthy things. We have moved from regular milk to almond milk, and we snack on bananas and apples now. She makes wraps instead of sandwiches, and because of her, we are incorporating vegetables into all of our home cooked meals. All of that is awesome and impressive, but the thing that blows me away every single day is her dedication to the Insanity Workout. Every night when I get home from work, she is either in the middle of her work out or just getting ready to start it and every day she pushes herself to finish the most insane work outs. It is the most inspiring thing ever. When we get a bigger place next year, one of my goals is to be able to do Insanity with her. Watching her push through all of the pain and the difficult speeds of Insanity is awesome, but that is not even where it ends. Last weekend she participated in her first 5K, and even though she had not really done any running in the last few months, she completed the 5K jogging the entire time. I was so proud of her. I AM so proud of her.
It is a wonderful thing to enjoy coming home at night, and knowing that someone is there who inspires you to be your best on a daily basis. I luck out because I spend my day with roughly 200 students who inspire me in a variety of ways, and then I come home to a girl who also inspires me. To say that life is good would be an understatement. So, now is the time to take all of this beautiful inspiration around me and put it to use. it is time for me to get my act in gear and get back to the business of getting healthy. Thanks for all of the support dear readers. Keep doing big things!
What started as a journey for physical and emotion health has morphed into something much bigger. Here you will find musings about my health journey, my teaching job, my re-entry into the world of academia, random thoughts about the world at large, books, movies, television, and ultimately my search for sustained happiness.
Saturday, September 14, 2013
Monday, September 2, 2013
What do you represent?
The first few weeks of teaching have taken up pretty much all of my time, so I apologize for getting lax on updating my blog but I figure with actually getting a holiday off, today would be the perfect time for an update. The focus of this blog will be my mental and emotional happiness, with a little bit of the physical work peppered in there. I am going to try and get my physical activity elevated in the next few days, so hopefully I will have that update for you.
A week ago Friday I began a poetry unit for all of my Junior classes. It was a disaster. They did not like the rap song I played, they did not like the Mumford and Sons song I played and they were rejecting the very idea of a poetry unit during their junior year. The most common reason was that they already could point out metaphors and similes, which of course, they should be able to do at 16 years old. I told them all that what we were going to do was deeper. I was going to expose them to new types of poetry and hopefully get into what the poetry/songs are about. I was getting nothing positive and I went into last weekend pretty sure the upcoming week was going to be terrible. After briefly considering just dropping the entire thing, I decided I had to power on and most importantly, I had to rethink my tactics. A few years ago I had written a poem entitled "What do you Represent." It was my first true attempt at a slam poetry piece and I was pretty proud of it, but never had any intention of performing it. During my student teaching, I was told I needed to teach poetry and I had a really great relationship with my students, so I decided I would start off our poetry week by performing that piece and having it lead to a whole assignment for each students where they all had to write a poem about what they represented. It was a smashing success. I decided I would perform for my new students, even though I feel like my relationship with them is a bit unknown. Sadly, I seemed to have misplaced that original poem. I wrote a new one that had similar aspects to my original one, but it had a whole new attitude to it. It seemed to have veered into a more call to action ending.
Monday morning came and I performed it for all of my classes and the response was positive, but not overwhelming. From there I went into my poetry week using slam poetry videos, traditional printed poetry and the lyrics of songs from The Zac Brown band and Justin Timberlake. Being a new teacher, I need feedback from students when units end and I tell them that their grade will not depend on how much praise they give, I just want honest feedback. This honest feedback method could certainly go horribly wrong, and I was bracing myself, but much to my surprise, a majority of my students wrote that they felt energized by the unit and that they actually looked forward to coming to class to analyze what these poems/songs really meant. A good portion mentioned that they were not looking forward to a week of poetry, but that my energy, unorthodox teaching style, and desire to stretch what they thought should be categorized as poetry, turned them around. I do not write about this to toot my own horn, I admit that part of the problem with the way that I teach poetry, is that I make it a bit easy on the individual, and focus more on the whole group, but I write about this because it was something with which I really struggled, and came out of it feeling great. I completely changed my approach to something to fit my students, and it worked. I think more than anything, it showed my students that I am trying to figure out how to best teach them.
Friday afternoon, one of my students came into class and said that they needed help filling time for the rally that was only 2 hours away and she asked if I would perform my slam piece for the entire school. I said yes, but was really feeling unsure of myself. The entire piece is based around my love of rap music, and with the exception of my students, no one in this school would know that. Plus, this school is full of country music lovers and the students all drive trucks and love guns. We do not exactly have much in common, and I was thinking that my slam piece about feeling like an outsider for growing up loving hip-hop would not be well received here. With those reservations, I went out to center court in the gym, grabbed the microphone and waited for silence. Only 1/4 of the students at this school know who I am. That means there were roughly 550 students sitting there that had no clue who I was. I have performed in musicals where there were maybe 200 people who did not know me, and in a few of those musicals I have been in a dress, and had to do some pretty ridiculous things, but the things I was performing were not written by me.
For the last 4 years or so, I have made it a goal to perform a piece of my own poetry in public, and every year I fail to reach that goal. Knowing that those room would have had maybe 50 people in them still was too much for me to bear my soul. Here I was standing in a quiet gymnasium in front of 700+ teenagers, and 30+ teachers and administrators, getting ready to perform a poem entitled "What do you Represent." As I waited for quiet, one of my students shouted "You got this Hadley" and it led to the entire section of juniors to start cheering. I took a deep breath and just went for it. As I was performing my piece, I could hear cheering, and when I got to the part of the poem where I talk about how I represent people who are different, or are called weird, I had to stop because the entire student body broke into applause. It was a surreal moment for me.
When it was all over, the principal made a bee-line for me and in that moment, I thought to myself "uh oh, did I swear somewhere in the poem?" I did not, he just wanted to express appreciation for me throwing myself into the school in such a personal way. Again, I do not recount this as some sort of #humblebrag or even a not so humble brag, I recount this because it was a huge deal for me. I conquered this big obstacle in my life by giving this huge piece of myself to nearly 800 people. This is one of those moments where I was flying without a net. It could have easily turned bad in a hurry, but in my nervousness for performing my piece, I forgot one very important thing: Almost everyone can relate to being an outsider in some way. The poem is, of course, not about loving rap music at all, it is about being true to yourself and owning what makes you who you are.
The last 18 months have been all about finding myself. From the really harsh realities of why I allowed myself to get this obese, to the beauty of making a change, this journey has been all about trying to realize what I truly represent. I have been honest with my students about my journey to healthy living. We spent a week talking about goal setting and I told them a bit about what I am going through right now. I believe in being as honest with my students as possible. Some teachers look down upon that method of teaching, and my mentor teacher flat out told me to stop it when I was doing my student teaching, but I think it is important to let my students in a little bit. Since the day I told them that, I have had a few students come up and ask me how I got started, and how I dealt with all of the teasing I endured in middle school and high school. After my poetry performance, I had three students I had never seen before come into my class and thank me for representing the misfits. They were nothing like me in terms of why they were misfits, but misfits come in all shapes and sizes.
I think the most important question to ask yourself when you start to feel like other people are controlling your emotions, or when you start to feel like you are losing yourself is "What do you Represent?" I think once you really start to think about that, you will figure it out. I know it is working for me.
A week ago Friday I began a poetry unit for all of my Junior classes. It was a disaster. They did not like the rap song I played, they did not like the Mumford and Sons song I played and they were rejecting the very idea of a poetry unit during their junior year. The most common reason was that they already could point out metaphors and similes, which of course, they should be able to do at 16 years old. I told them all that what we were going to do was deeper. I was going to expose them to new types of poetry and hopefully get into what the poetry/songs are about. I was getting nothing positive and I went into last weekend pretty sure the upcoming week was going to be terrible. After briefly considering just dropping the entire thing, I decided I had to power on and most importantly, I had to rethink my tactics. A few years ago I had written a poem entitled "What do you Represent." It was my first true attempt at a slam poetry piece and I was pretty proud of it, but never had any intention of performing it. During my student teaching, I was told I needed to teach poetry and I had a really great relationship with my students, so I decided I would start off our poetry week by performing that piece and having it lead to a whole assignment for each students where they all had to write a poem about what they represented. It was a smashing success. I decided I would perform for my new students, even though I feel like my relationship with them is a bit unknown. Sadly, I seemed to have misplaced that original poem. I wrote a new one that had similar aspects to my original one, but it had a whole new attitude to it. It seemed to have veered into a more call to action ending.
Monday morning came and I performed it for all of my classes and the response was positive, but not overwhelming. From there I went into my poetry week using slam poetry videos, traditional printed poetry and the lyrics of songs from The Zac Brown band and Justin Timberlake. Being a new teacher, I need feedback from students when units end and I tell them that their grade will not depend on how much praise they give, I just want honest feedback. This honest feedback method could certainly go horribly wrong, and I was bracing myself, but much to my surprise, a majority of my students wrote that they felt energized by the unit and that they actually looked forward to coming to class to analyze what these poems/songs really meant. A good portion mentioned that they were not looking forward to a week of poetry, but that my energy, unorthodox teaching style, and desire to stretch what they thought should be categorized as poetry, turned them around. I do not write about this to toot my own horn, I admit that part of the problem with the way that I teach poetry, is that I make it a bit easy on the individual, and focus more on the whole group, but I write about this because it was something with which I really struggled, and came out of it feeling great. I completely changed my approach to something to fit my students, and it worked. I think more than anything, it showed my students that I am trying to figure out how to best teach them.
Friday afternoon, one of my students came into class and said that they needed help filling time for the rally that was only 2 hours away and she asked if I would perform my slam piece for the entire school. I said yes, but was really feeling unsure of myself. The entire piece is based around my love of rap music, and with the exception of my students, no one in this school would know that. Plus, this school is full of country music lovers and the students all drive trucks and love guns. We do not exactly have much in common, and I was thinking that my slam piece about feeling like an outsider for growing up loving hip-hop would not be well received here. With those reservations, I went out to center court in the gym, grabbed the microphone and waited for silence. Only 1/4 of the students at this school know who I am. That means there were roughly 550 students sitting there that had no clue who I was. I have performed in musicals where there were maybe 200 people who did not know me, and in a few of those musicals I have been in a dress, and had to do some pretty ridiculous things, but the things I was performing were not written by me.
For the last 4 years or so, I have made it a goal to perform a piece of my own poetry in public, and every year I fail to reach that goal. Knowing that those room would have had maybe 50 people in them still was too much for me to bear my soul. Here I was standing in a quiet gymnasium in front of 700+ teenagers, and 30+ teachers and administrators, getting ready to perform a poem entitled "What do you Represent." As I waited for quiet, one of my students shouted "You got this Hadley" and it led to the entire section of juniors to start cheering. I took a deep breath and just went for it. As I was performing my piece, I could hear cheering, and when I got to the part of the poem where I talk about how I represent people who are different, or are called weird, I had to stop because the entire student body broke into applause. It was a surreal moment for me.
When it was all over, the principal made a bee-line for me and in that moment, I thought to myself "uh oh, did I swear somewhere in the poem?" I did not, he just wanted to express appreciation for me throwing myself into the school in such a personal way. Again, I do not recount this as some sort of #humblebrag or even a not so humble brag, I recount this because it was a huge deal for me. I conquered this big obstacle in my life by giving this huge piece of myself to nearly 800 people. This is one of those moments where I was flying without a net. It could have easily turned bad in a hurry, but in my nervousness for performing my piece, I forgot one very important thing: Almost everyone can relate to being an outsider in some way. The poem is, of course, not about loving rap music at all, it is about being true to yourself and owning what makes you who you are.
The last 18 months have been all about finding myself. From the really harsh realities of why I allowed myself to get this obese, to the beauty of making a change, this journey has been all about trying to realize what I truly represent. I have been honest with my students about my journey to healthy living. We spent a week talking about goal setting and I told them a bit about what I am going through right now. I believe in being as honest with my students as possible. Some teachers look down upon that method of teaching, and my mentor teacher flat out told me to stop it when I was doing my student teaching, but I think it is important to let my students in a little bit. Since the day I told them that, I have had a few students come up and ask me how I got started, and how I dealt with all of the teasing I endured in middle school and high school. After my poetry performance, I had three students I had never seen before come into my class and thank me for representing the misfits. They were nothing like me in terms of why they were misfits, but misfits come in all shapes and sizes.
I think the most important question to ask yourself when you start to feel like other people are controlling your emotions, or when you start to feel like you are losing yourself is "What do you Represent?" I think once you really start to think about that, you will figure it out. I know it is working for me.
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