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to build further learning opportunities some of the questions we should be asking our students this year are what have you learned during the pandemic do you mind teaching us just one of those things what do you need to do that what do you think might happen if we asked these questions and created space for children to do these things katherine bomer says centering children naming in descriptive and appreciative language what children know and can do can help educators make an important shift as you can see viewing students through a lens of abundance is powerful we must also view ourselves our resources and our classroom environment through this lens do we bless children abundantly the next important question we must ask of our students and ourselves is where does it hurt civil rights activist ruby sales says she learned to ask this simple but pointed question during the civil rights movement to get directly to the source of people s pain this question she said unleashes territory like no other inquiry so today my dear colleagues i ask you as a professional educator where does it hurt we are all i am certain occupying different intellectual emotional social physical and spiritual spaces but after well over a year of a pandemic punctuated by untold grief unchecked murder racial reckoning and backlash insurrection and collective suffering caused by individual greed we are all hurting somewhere our students are experiencing this hurt as well we must build classrooms full of radical compassion and radical love and partner with the mental health professionals in our schools to address this hurt going to school each day and acting as if everything is normal whatever that means will not serve anyone well our children cannot learn without their social emotional well being intact their social emotional well being will not be intact unless our classrooms are spaces wherein teachers and children discover and navigate their individual and collective truths just this past week during a demo lesson i invited second graders to write the pandemic stories that were on their hearts and absolutely had to be told the children wrote so many important stories while simultaneously processing a range of emotions the death of their pets the birth of siblings ill grandparents the first time they rode a four wheeler and the passing of great grandparents there was joy and there were tears they wrote with such passion that even as the time ticked away and writing workshop should have been coming to an end they did not want to stop just the day before their hard working deeply loving teachers had told me that writing workshop was feeling a little tricky this year because the students hadn t had the same experiences they usually have thus had no writing territory they had nothing to write about but when i asked them in a developmentally appropriate and emotionally supportive way where does it hurt they couldn t stop writing on march 31 1968 four days before he was asassinated rev dr martin luther king jr preached a sermon entitled remaining awake through a great revolution in it he alludes to the story of rip van winkle who in a short story by washington irving falls asleep in the catskill mountains for twenty years and awakens to a completely different america one that has gone through a revolution while he was asleep one of the great liabilities of life said dr king is that all too many people find themselves living amid a great period of social change and yet they fail to develop the new attitudes the new mental responses that the new situation demands they end up sleeping through a revolution i was reminded of this sermon when i asked myself where does it hurt while it hurts in so many places right now the willful slumber of so many folks within our education community and the entities with which we intersect are causing me the most pain today it hurts where educators are being forced to inundate children with standardized assessments testing is a poor substitute for justice it hurts where i know the results of these assessments will be used to demoralize children and teachers to tell us that in the midst of a global crisis we have more deficits than assets it hurts where i see so many of my colleagues agreeing with this deficit mentality rather than pushing back on the insanity it hurts where these perceived deficits and fear cloud educators minds and cause us to make instructional decisions that do not center children or fulfill our promise to care for the whole child it just hurts it hurts where tradition even in the midst of so much hurt supersedes our will to do what is right for the children who are sitting vulnerable in front of us trusting us to not just do right but be right it hurts deep within for i fear at this moment when we have the opportunity to dismantle the oppressive systems that were harming our children long before our present crisis when we should be wide awake in the middle of a revolution blessing children abundantly many of us don t have the will the plan or the stamina to make it happen we will just return to the status quo and the same children who were not being served before or during the pandemic will continue to leave our schools stripped of their identities and their dignity after the pandemic this is where it hurts for me this is where it hurts for so many of our children even if they cannot articulate it this is where it hurts for their communities so i ask you again dear colleagues where does it hurt return to your writing what do you notice about your educator pain i believe our pain reveals our purpose passions and power as much as it does our illnesses injuries and insecurities what story does your pain tell are you sleeping during a revolution or are you wide awake today i challenge you to be wide awake i beg you to take this hurt and turn it into an opportunity to heal let us look at children and ourselves through a lens of abundance and challenge the narratives that will cause us to do harm let s instead tell the counter narrative which is actually the truth let s sidle up alongside children and embrace the joy of learning both with and from them joy is and always has been a form of resistance thank you for listening may this school year bless you abundantly kinderbender uncategorized leave a comment march 17 2025 9 minutes weekend glory it s after 9 00 on a saturday night and i m in my classroom working i ve been here nearly twelve hours and i just told myself that i must leave before midnight lest i fall asleep at church in the morning i didn t plan on teaching this year i didn t plan on falling in love but when it became more and more clear that if i walked away from this beautiful brilliant bunch of fourth graders i d be turning them over to the turmoil and trauma of having multiple substitute teachers i found a way to stay i m teacher tired i m i only have 1 3 of a colon so my iron is low tired i m the darkness of the arctic is closing in on us faster than i would like tired i m i am still a misanthrope and the big people keep talking to me tired i m as the old folks say tide and yet last friday we read sometimes i feel like a fox it s a quick and fantastic read that is chockfull of things to teach students of all ages as we considered which animals we find ourselves feeling like most often a bright eyed girl with a lot of opinions said you re a hummingbird no you re a woodpecker you re whatever has a lot of energy a rabbit said her smiley eyed classmate you are always bouncing all over the place say what the children were adamant that i have more energy than they know how to handle earlier that morning the same girl had inquired as to whether or not i take any days off or just spend all of my time working in our classroom she sees me i m used to teaching the tiniest humans the ones who don t quite connect all the dots when they experience new activities or walk into a classroom that has been provisioned just for them fourth graders in their penultimate year of elementary school know someone has to do these things they know that that someone is ms aeriale their teacher their energizer bunny what they don t know is that every ounce of my energy comes from being in their presence they are the rechargeable batteries that make me go go go the first and last prayers i whisper each day are for them for their protection for their healing for their patience with me and their willingness to teach me something new during our precious moments together i didn t plan on teaching this year i didn t plan on falling in love but i did and i am because i found a way to stay i wonder how often i have missed out on what god has for me because i left instead i will never know but i am thankful i did not miss this blessing working in our classroom on this saturday night is my weekend glory kinderbender uncategorized leave a comment september 29 2024 september 29 2024 2 minutes the yellow brick road dear people just as in most years past mailing holiday greetings would extend my capacity to adult too far for me to manage i can pull off writing a letter here and posting on social media though i ll lie a lot less than most of you do for one i have no children to be a braggart about for the record if your child is less than perfect they are human and lovable just as they are but i ve also learned the importance of vulnerability over the past several years and vulnerability requires living in our truth though it s landed me in some places i ve had to run sometimes even crawl away from living with authenticity has taught me how to live my messy messy life with as much grace brilliance and beauty as the universe affords me integrity and resilience unintentionally became my words of the year in 2022 this year more than any other i have had to choose to be who i say i am over and over again dreams that i d pursued for over a decade became reality as they did i quickly discovered that i d been traipsing down a yellow brick road the wizards i d venerated were not just ordinary they were extraordinarily problematic harmful to my body and being i ve been transparent about my health journey since my diabetes diagnosis in the spring what i haven t said is how deeply i believe that all the work i d done since my pcos diagnosis twenty six years ago when i was warned that i was at high risk for developing diabetes was foiled by the harrowing circumstances of the second half of 2021 and most of this year i have been known to surrender myself to my work it s easy to do when it feels less like a career and more like a calling especially because the best thing this world has to offer our children are the ultimate recipients of my sacrifices but i was giving too much i was a martyr something had to give i let go of it all i leapt i would never take full credit for the good in my life i believe in god i believe in the people in my life i believe in therapy but more than during any other difficult circumstances in my life when i began my descent this time i caught myself this isn t the medicine a doctor told me it doesn t work this fast this is you it was me it was me at the gym doing the work it was me filling my plate with foods that heal rather than harm my body it was me who chose integrity and humanity over publication it was me showing up to my weekly therapy appointment it was me finally showing up for myself that yellow brick road brought me to some harsh realizations but it also sent me on a journey back to myself it brought me home i am all kinds of things those of you who really know me have seen me go from forcing my belly to bulge like the buddha s and rubbing it to make people laugh to forcing folx to reckon with white supremacy in a matter of minutes this year has taught me again that i am above all the kind of person who does hard things there is no easy way to live well life requires us to be born and to die again and again that is the nature of be ing may this holiday season be an opportunity for you to love infinitely and reflect on your own be ing wishing you the best love always aeriale kinderbender uncategorized leave a comment december 25 2022 december 25 2022 2 minutes 46 being a professional educator has always given me the advantage of being reflective as the years pass by too quickly it is possible but incredibly difficult to spend the majority of your days with children and not constantly be simultaneously living in ways that consider the past embrace the present and look toward the future the tiny humans demand that i bring my best self to the meeting areas and u shaped tables where so much magic happens i don t get up from the floor in one quick movement the way i used to the little people i lean in to confer with often mark the years with their words you are getting more white hairs ms j if i d stayed put in the place where i began retirement would be as close as all their lives are to my heart am i old i don t really think so i m in better shape than i have been thanks to the gift of livabetes my mind is as sharp as it has ever been my heart is full of joy beyond words and that peace that passes all understanding it is well with my soul and i am half the age my grandmother was upon her passing my time here is not up but time is not feeling infinite am i making every moment count am i living in a way that the only words i ll be desperate to utter when the time for my eternal rest is nigh are something like thank you i love you i m so glad i was here i ve tried dear ones i ve tried every choice i ve made doesn t seem like the best one to the people i love but everything i ve done was right for me perhaps only in the moment i ve self corrected if i have no other stance toward life i am a learner i am grateful to the universe and everything that inhabits it for being a teacher for teaching me there are years that ask questions and years that answer wrote dear zora the years that do both are harrowing chaos brings out the best and the worst in me 45 a pandemic a cross country move a new job a place to call home an abundance loss after loss the sting of racism again and again and again a new job again racism again abundance again i ve had years like this before this time something was different i was different the past made the present easier to see clearly this too shall pass i have a hope and a future i have a knowing i know how to heal alone on land i ve never traversed with my heart wide open with gratitude for it all but especially the abundance that allows me to travel from wells of pain to those of hope and back again renewed ready to be present now and in the future 46 kinderbender uncategorized 1 comment october 19 2022 october 19 2022 2 minutes i m a chain okay not really but this quote from steel magnolias comes to mind every time i think about how i have arrived at this professional juncture integrity conviction ardor community all of these have played an integral role in the decisions that have led ...