on travel.

As I crawled up the dusty mountain, my sweaty palms turning the California dirt into mud, I stopped myself suddenly to catch the view.  Trying out the Chakra breathing technique I’d been practicing in yoga, I grabbed my husband’s hand.  Ahhhh.  This is life.  We were eleven weeks pregnant and no one knew but us.  Looking through the perfect coupling of two mountain peaks, with the Big Bear Lake filling the space between, mother nature reminded me that we were on her turf and for all she cared, we could take it or leave it.  I’ll take it, I thought.  The school year had just wrapped up and I left my principalship for a new beginning as a classroom teacher.  We were going to be parents and I was going to be a teacher again (insert chakra breathing and a cool summer breeze).  The great unknown was lying before us.  Feeling my internal reset button kicking into gear, I knew I was ready.  Thank you, mother nature.  

We all know the benefits of vacationing. Rest, replenishment, rejuvenation. You get to explore new cultures, taste local dishes, meet interesting people and gain perspective on life.  It’s a no brainer that teachers need vacation, but for some reason, we aren’t taking advantage of our time off.  

Why don’t teachers travel during vacation time? 6 Excuses Debunked

1. Travel is too expensive on a teacher’s salary. Start small.  Take a quick weekend road trip to the next hot city.  Stay with a friend or Airbnb a shared room, many run as low as $30 a night.  If you choose to fly, choose your destination based on the best deals.  Budget to eat out for dinner but hit the grocery store for breakfast and lunch.  It’s doable. Plus, once you set the date, it all becomes real; you will save, save save.  

2. I’m so tired, I just want to sleep all week/weekend.   Then book a beach vacation! One of those cheesy all inclusive resort spa types where you can shuffle from your room to the scorching hot folding chair and sip spiked smoothies while dipping your toes in the sand.  Sleep you will get!   

3. My family lives out of state, I want to use my time off to go home. I can relate to this one.  Our families reside in the Midwest, a long haul from New Orleans.  Feeling the weight of missing family and friends, multiplied by work stresses can be tough.  Holidays are sacred for my family.  But why not use non-holiday vacation time to bring your family or friends with you?  Even just one week per year? Your homegirls or homeboys all deserve time away, and y’all just might start travel traditions of your own.  

4. I could use the week off to get ahead on lesson planning, etc. so I can feel more relaxed after break.  Are you really going to relax when you return?  Come on.  Teachers are blessed with time off and should take advantage of it.  Once you cross these tasks off your list, more will surface and so the cycle begins again.  Imagine what rich lesson plans you could bring to the table with photographs and anecdotes of your travel experiences?  

5. I keep meaning to book something, but I get so busy, and before you know it..it’s vacation time!  Book now.  Book now.  Book now. Once you’re committed, you’re in.  No one to join you?  Go solo.  Also, the sooner you book, the sooner you have something to look forward to.  Especially on the hard days.  You have a countdown to explore the great wide open!

There is such power in switching your brain to vacay mode. No laptop required. You’ll also be reminded of how great it is to be in a career that affords tons of vacation time!  Plus summers off.  And if you don’t plan on retiring as a classroom teacher, now is more reason to take advantage.  

Learning about new people, cultures and subcultures develops who you are as a person and who you are as a teacher.  Also, the hiccups that travel brings will not only grow your character, but just might improve your teaching. In stressful moments, I often drift off to that mountain top memory in the California wild; reminding me that there’s a world outside my four classroom walls.  

Teachers, invest in yourself as a human being.  Happiness may not be a “S.M.A.R.T” goal, but your students will feel the change in you.  So get to booking!

Looking for long term travel? -Teach abroad!

International Teacher Job Fair-San Francisco Feb 2017

Want to travel for free?  Check out grants that fund independent PD!

Fund for Teachers-Application deadline Jan 31, 2017

on relationships.

Four o’clock on a Tuesday and I’m home.  H.O.M.E.  Home and chilling.  I didn’t used to be like this.  I used to be a workaholic.  Depending on my job role, my students or my teachers came first.  I mean, they were human beings, not products, how dare I live any other way?  After college, I left Michigan to teach abroad and since then, I’ve lived and fought the good fight all over the country in the charter school world, until I met my now husband.  Late nights in hotel rooms in Fort Myers prepping PD so as to be engaging, yet purposeful, yet cram in a bunch of PD objectives into three hundred minutes.   Hours on end at the round table in South Bend, analyzing benchmark scores and comparing line graphs and bar graphs and scatterplots.   Choreographing dance rap battles to teach fractions in Chicago.  Writing song lyrics to Drake’s Once Dance, to teach central idea in New Orleans. Vetting classroom environment walkthru checklists in Los Angeles.  (Yeah, I said classroom environment checklists.)  Lesson planning parties over wine.  Grading parties over huevos rancheros, pinterest parties over Gossip Girl marathons, report card party potlucks, you name it.  Eat, sleep, breathe, education.  And if I ever questioned it all, I would throw myself into guilty educator mode.  “Don’t be selfish.  Your students need you..or..your teachers need you. No excuses.  You are young, this is education, change takes sacrifice.”

Everything changed recently.  Maybe the change happened the moment she was born, or maybe it happened gradually after nights I slept exactly ninety minutes following a baby sleep regression, but it happened.  The fact that it took 34 years for me to realize that the people in my life are what matter most, or that maybe I knew that, but didn’t act on it, either way, was now a reality.  Suddenly writing a whole paragraph feedback response on my student’s persuasive essay seemed irrelevant.  Making sure my anchor charts were pinterest perfect and color coded seemed like a waste of time.  Racking my brain over recent student test data and why so and so performed this way and how the essay question wasn’t fair, blah, blah, blah, appeared to be a worry of my past self.  

Did I still care about education?  Of course.  Did I care about my students?  Of course.  Am I selfish? Maybe a little, but that’s okay.  Did I still stay up late at night, breastfeeding my little girl in one arm, while researching the most engaging text to teach author’s claim in another?  Yes.  But did I also think that as my husband slept soundly next to me and my baby let out a precious baby sneeze, that my life was bigger than the classroom?  Yes.  It was time to let go a little.  I was left wondering, though, why did it take having a child to put relationships first?  Furthermore, did I ever put myself first?  

Culture shock set in after recently returning to the classroom after seven years of leadership. I chose my school wisely and am blessed to have a principal that gets it.  Other than the anticipated struggles of classroom management and feelings of crazy spent energy as I eased back in, I was quickly reminded of the lack of teacher sustainability in this profession.  It is a profession, let me remind you, a career, a job, a slice of the pie chart next to family, friends, health and leisure.  Somewhere along the education reform ride, we forgot that teachers are human beings and not robots.  Students first, yes, but teachers are burning out fast and the really good ones are leaving the profession in droves because they are smart enough to realize that this life isn’t sustainable.  Grading and planning and attending sporting events and parent conferences and IEP meetings and filling out paperwork and paperwork and paperwork.  The charter world’s no excuses mentality.  Eight hours with kids.  Amazing kids that change lives, and teach you more than you teach them, but still.  Not worth your sanity.  I may have survived this long because I sidetracked to leadership or because I had great mentors that motivated me to persevere, but either way...something has to change, people.  

And for now, I say...Teachers...care less.  Don’t wait to be a mother to put relationships in your life first.  Hell, put you first.  Go to yoga and tell your boss you can’t make that data meeting this Tuesday at 5:30 because there’s only hot yoga scheduled once a week.  And you are G.O.I.N.G.