What do you cling to? Are you a parent that is just trying to get by? Are you basing your value on your success in life? Or, maybe you feel lost and are clinging to the hope that you’ll find your way sooner than later. Do you ever stop to ponder why you have made the choices you have? Was it based on your heart or influence?
Did you ever do something because you were supposed to? More importantly, do you ask this of the children in your life?
I look back a lot. I think about how I felt about public school as a student and my need to fit into a certain mold even when I felt out of place more often than not. I think about how my education as a new teacher molded my love of learning and my hope for the future, and how my personal experiences lead me to question if I was equip to take on life as an adult. I look back to my life in the legal and law enforcement field and what I saw in those I worked with. How did they get to this place? How did we, as a society fail them?
It all makes me think about how my beliefs and experiences shaped the guidance, or lack of guidance, I’ve provided as someone others rely on through major changes in their life. As an educator, I have a profound responsibility to the students I oversee in their developmental years. As an officer, my treatment of those whose choices led to arrest could easily impact their future view of themselves and future choices.
There is a realization that how we approach life as adults, and our understanding of life and its inter-workings, directly impact those we work with. It impacts those we raise. And, sometimes, that impact is lifelong or sets them on a trajectory of greatness or destruction.
While this is not some new, mind-altering concept, the full realization of it pushed me to where I am today. The puzzle pieces started to come together and paint a picture of what I felt I was called to do. And, for better or for worse, it took me down a rabbit hole, questioning how I could do better for our society and children.
We owe it to our kids to provide them with the tools they need to be happy and healthy, productive yet balance, giving yet providing care to themselves, educated yet willing to learn, empathetic yet grounded, and meek yet strong. But in order to do this, we have to be willing to grow ourselves and lead by example.
As adults, especially teachers and parents, we must accept support and feedback. We, ourselves, must be confident enough in our life that we are willing to learn. There is a space that must be created to allow you to be who you are, so that your insecurities and tensions do not radiate out into your circles, especially to the children in our lives.
This is no small feat! We are all a never-ending work in progress and, I hope, always carrying a willingness to learn from the lessons that life gives us.
I share this in the hopes that each of you will travel this path in life, seeking reality instead of headlines, love instead of hate, education instead of arrogance, and being a role model instead of a ceiling.
Don’t block yourself in, with self-depreciating or limiting talk and actions. Create a space for yourself that you want your children to have as adults. Build up your strengths and work to overcome your weaknesses. Surround yourself with those hold you up, support your individuality, and cheer you on. Don’t give your energy to those who work to deplete it. Live your life in a way that makes you proud, yet not arrogant.
And in all of it, give that gift to the children in your life.
Yellowwood Learning Community 
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