January 6, 2024 – #OneWord: HAPPY

It’s Saturday night and I love how my body has completely conditioned itself to take the day off. I spent the last year trying to take a day off at least once a week and it’s been wonderful for my mental, physical, and spiritual health. Taking it SLOW was my mantra for the latter half of 2023 and now I feel like I have some sense of control of myself and my well-being to make this work more sustainable. Conversely, I have a TONNE of things to do. Knowing this could make me feel anxious (and it does sometimes), but what I have to remember is, I am doing my best. That’s all I can say. And part of doing my best is to REST and PLAY too.

The first week of teaching went well. I started teaching on Wednesday. It’s the first time for me to teach numeracy. I am excited but it will be a learning curve that I am looking forward to learning more about numeracy and early learners. As mentioned in a previous blog post in October, I just learned that I might be deficient in Spatial Thinking (i.e., no sense of direction, reading issues, etc.). I learned this from the BCAMT conference. I was so engaged and I didn’t know. Moreover, I have invited the district numeracy teacher to share her knowledge and now the district learning commons teacher to talk about manipulatives.

What can I say? I am HAPPY. I am so grateful to have colleagues in the field who want to share their expertise with teacher candidates. I feel very fortunate and humbled. My Thursday’s class could have been a bit better. I struggled a bit because I was trying to redirect the course that was not aligned to what I had originally imagined for the course. I am still thinking about that class and how to navigate next steps. I am super grateful for the students and their adaptability. I ended the week with my Friday’s 4-hour class in assessment and motivation. In this class, I found my flow and reflective of Thursday’s class. It was a good day.

I spent a tonne of time prepping for Friday’s class. 4-hours of prep was intense. In the end, I was really happy with how the class went and I always appreciate relating what I do as a practitioner to (my two “boyfriends”) Parker Palmer and Alasdair MacIntyre. I love my reflective practice. It’s not just about blogging, but I love learning from my experiences. To be able to relate my work to the thinking of Palmer and MacIntyre makes me feel more aligned to my practice. This makes me HAPPY. As you can see, I am trying to align my way to being to my #OneWord.

I’ve been choosing #OneWord for the last 10-years (or maybe a bit less, but close). Often I would choose words that were “should” oriented or “directional.” At least, the intention behind the word I chose for those years. This year is different. I chose a word about BEING. How do I want to be? How do I want to feel? Happy seemed like the best word for me in 2024. And truth, I feel that way. I am also using this word to self-reflect on (i.e., in terms of how the day went, the decisions I’ve made, or how my class went). In the end, I just want to be happy. That’s it.

Being HAPPY has helped me to let things go, to go with the flow, and to do what makes me happy. I hated feeling like I was in the hustle. I’ve done that for years, maybe for decades. I’m in a new place, mentally and spiritually. I am also focused on this year is also my physical health. It has caused me problems over the past few years due to my age and how I’ve been taking care of myself. My commitment is to prioritize myself. I’m learning how to do this. One step at a time. I can do this. What I can say is, the year started really strong… and for this, I’m really happy.