It got me here

“He’s a gem”

That he is. Have you ever met someone that radiates electricity? So much so it’s shocking? Have you ever met someone that seems to get their energy from the Sun? They aren’t drained by the bullshit in the world, water off a duck’s back. And they give, give like it gives them happiness because… well it does.

“It’s not random,”

he counters me. How could it be? How could everything that came before this, not have led us here and crafted us into what we were meant to be? Am I not the best version of myself for this very moment. Rainier wrote to his beloved how the first love is naive and thus unrealized, just two lovers throwing themselves helplessly towards each other. Neuroscience tells us that as we practice and “fire and wire” our neurons together, using what we know from experience in new contexts, we strengthen the dendrites and grow myelin that makes thinking (neurons firing) much more rapid — a fancy way of saying that practice makes perfect. I guess all of our coaches had more insight that transcends the field and the game. Or maybe the game is really the one we are playing now.

“Critical,”

my mentor instructs me to write, “that’s what these people are to your story. I had woven a web of consciousness with lines connecting people, feelings, an places before he arrived at the coffee shop. I had taken a chance and asked him about his book that sat betwixt several others on the table at the Obama Foundation Panel for ComplexCon. The title resonated to me as if just the right frequency had been played for my heart strings. This interaction was enough to put into motion what I already see to be a challenging mentor-relationship. Race, identity, and rationales were discussed over coffee and pages and screens and scribbled notes. Notes were stuffed between gray folder pages.

I am on chapter 8 of 9. I don’t usually rewatch movies, reread books, or text back. Only kidding. But on the topic of books, I don’t. I had leant this text after reading it, only to not get it back… yet. I reordered it and have been consuming it as I read for the dual purposes of my own learning and classroom, as well as informing an opportunity to work with the incoming teachers at my school in the format of a book study/ PLC, which I am working to bring into reality.

Who would have thought that I could love this much? Who would have thought that I could do this much? Who would have ever thought that I would end up here, in Chicago, as a teacher? Not me… for sure. And yet, I am extremely proud and grateful to be here in the place that I am.