For babies they call it failure to thrive. For teachers it’s just let me survive. Both are cases that involve proper nurturing.  Yes, teachers need nurturing as much as babies growing into adults. As a recent retiree of 44 years in public education, I know first hand what I am talking about.  Those years in my career that I felt supported both with needed supplies and materials and acknowledgement of my strengths, I was encouraged to be creative and build on those positive traits.  I was energized, enthusiastic and enjoying the challenges that arose daily in the classroom.  Stress was always present, but collaboratively managed for the students’ benefit. Teachers were respected by their employers, based on their education and experience. The last decade of my career, I experienced the erosion of this needed nurturing, although unaware at the time that it was the problem.  


Educational reform has been the hot topic throughout my career, and I am the first to accept that changing instructional practices, based on good educational research is absolutely appropriate and necessary.  That schools are caught in a paradigm shift is not new, but this time around, the stakes are higher than ever before.  Competition among systems for money to operate has inadvertently shifted the blame for everything that is wrong in the world to teachers.  The drive to improve literacy (a good thing) has overshadowed the big picture;  creativity, the key to past American success and our future, has been forced to the side for teachers and filtered down to students. 

Checklists of expected teacher traits have replaced recognition for creative ways to reach kids. Algorithms to qualify teacher effectiveness create an atmosphere of fear of making a mistake.  Even experienced teachers find themselves in defensive positions, trying to prove their right to be in the classroom, rather than be encouraged to use their own strengths and interests to inspire kids to learn.  

A good school administrator at any level needs to be a nurturer first.  Teachers, principals, superintendents all need encouraged to connect to their charges personally and create a safe and secure environment, where new ideas are welcome.  Teachers especially, are much like students.  They like to be praised when they have created a winning approach for teaching a previously elusive concept or discovered an avenue into a kid’s psyche that unlocks a behavior or learning problem.  

For educators who are treated with respect, valued for their education and experience, and nurtured to use their talents and unique skills, the sky is the limit for what they are willing to do.  For educators, who are bogged down with micro managing  demands and neglected in recognition for their willingness to create,  find themselves just trying to survive until their earliest possible retirement date.  Many opportunities are lost for students, for the education system, for America.  Teachers need nurtured to develop grassroots solutions for educating kids!   www.charihocares.weebly.com

Note: This blog was created for the 1000 Voices Speak for Compassion movement, which addresses a monthly topic, published on the 20th of each month.  This month’s topic:Nurturing. http://1000voicesspeak.org/2015/04/19/1000speak-about-nurturing/

Advice whether you ask or not:  Do just one thing in retirement that scares you.  

This stage of life called retirement is the gift of time - the time to finally do what one wants. That distant light at the end of the tunnel - the destination - is finally reached. You have arrived!  Now what? Viewed as a destination, retirement proves disappointing. You are still the same person, but have lost your identity in this process. How do you now define yourself?

Do you obsess about financial or health issues? Do you uproot and move to a different climate?  Do you seek a creative living arrangement around other retirees? Do you join life long learning classes? While each of these conventional ideas of retirement are valid activities, they do not feed the new identity that you seek.   In his book, Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes, William Bridges calls these ideas diversions from the work that needs to be done in retirement. He says, "The final chapter of the work life may or may not involve salaried work, but it must return to society the fruits of those discoveries made during the third quarter of life." (97)  

How to share your gifts, skills, and life lessons can be hard to identify.  One repeated recommendation for mining the fruits of your life experience is to meditate.  I am trying to learn how to do that.  It is easy to pray to a higher being and wait for a response.  It is much harder to look inside and honor your own thoughts and being with action. Silence, helps.  

Early in my retirement I committed to a week without TV to explore this concept of silence and quieting of the mind. Since the news and weather were my main reasons for watching TV, I subscribed to The Skim, read online news on Twitter, and checked the weather on my phone.  Done.  I rarely turn on TV now, and find that comforting.  I do watch one specific program, Downton Abby (can't help it, I love the cultural conflicts!), AND when my daughter calls me to say that the sky is falling, "Turn on the TV!" 

I find this silence refreshing and imagine that my brain is working much better than when it was on media overload.(No scientific evidence, just my feeling.) A good friend advises that life flows by like a river with many distractions, diversions, attractions, and addictions and the challenge is to pay attention and snag those attractions that resonate with you and act on them.  Honoring that advice, I am taking a two week vacation from this blog to respond to an attraction that has surfaced - to assist in completing a grant application for a start-up non-profit, Reading Kingdoms, with a looming due date of March 18 - honoring my own thoughts with action.  It's something that will make a difference for children in Pawtucket, RI and in American education. Teachers have good ideas.  I want to support solutions that come from the trenches, not from the top. 
 
 Advice whether or not you ask:  Change it up!  Whatever is your passion, do it! 

Destination weddings are the new rage.  I just attended a mountain top wedding in Vermont , temperature 18°.  Seated on benches, the guests were wrapped in blankets, surrounded by outdoor heaters.  Under the toile fabric and pine decorated birch-log chuppah, the beautiful non Jewish bride in a strapless gown and her Jewish groom vowed to honor and cherish each other for the rest of their lives. The reception included toasts, dancing, and fabulous food, but no cake cutting drama – the five tiered cake was cut and served up from the kitchen!   Tradition and modernity were juxtaposed in the creation of a moment that will reflect the couple’s lives from now on.

I am looking in the mirror for a moment and reflecting on my own marriage of 42 years to the only Jewish boy in town.  Colleen and Misha’s story is yet to be written, but my thoughts on this major transition in life may be of interest.  In 1968 our interfaith marriage was viewed with curiosity and concern;  we were cautioned by both families and friends that it couldn't work, but we didn't listen, of course.  At nineteen and twenty, we knew everything, and it felt right to us - all that mattered.  

I confess that religious practices and food preferences created conflict, but we addressed these issues head on, because they were obvious cultural differences.  Luckily I liked to cook and eventually learned how; some of Frank's favorite Jewish dishes even became favorites of mine and my gentile family. As for religion, we agreed to disagree and carried on with our lives, never merging the two, and never abandoning our beliefs. Our children grew up respecting both religions and are moral independent thinkers today. All that worry and concern about the children was for naught. As our cultures clashed, our lives became richer and more interesting, as we mined family traditions for the best and sometimes created our own. 

It was those subtle cultural traditions that color everything that caused more trouble. How do you react to a crisis? What are the rules for spending and saving money? How do you discipline the children?  Who will do what household chores?  Those daily decisions, clouded by family of origin culture, threatened peace in the union.  The cultural piece was invisible and the conflict became personal. Most conflict has culture at the root.

The caution that should be observed in forging relationships, not just a marriage, is not to avoid the possibility of conflict, but to embrace it with ferver and learn the lessons that exploring different cultures provides. Tradition and modernity can co-exist peacefully.   An adventure awaits. 

Comment from a fellow teacher retiree upon the release of my website . . . “I thought you'd be toting your golf clubs through Florida or Arizona by now! You've gone in a whole other direction.”  He is surprised and honestly, so am I.  So why am I not somewhere warm and sunny enjoying my long-time passion of golf, instead of inside my house at my computer, wearing three layers to endure the below-freezing cold temperatures, staring out at waist deep snow?  All I can say is, “I believe I am where I am supposed to be.”

My retirement in June 2014 from 44 years in public education has given me a surprising sense of peace and purpose. I have learned to follow my inner voice, pay attention to my intuition, and fear not. A specific incident revealed my retirement path and peeled away the stress of a lifetime of work.  On the plane to a family reunion the day after my official last day of school, I plugged in my music and experienced what I now know was a “Soul Journey.”  Basking in the well-wishes of my co-workers, family, and friends, I was on a natural high. (Really, it was natural.) My mind wandered into the past, as Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and Neil Diamond rocked away in my ears, and I entered a state of dreamlike awareness - not sleeping, but not really awake.   

It was a Pulp Fiction kind of journey, disjointed, but connected by the string of people who appeared along the way, people who had influenced my development in life – deceased husband, close relatives, friends, and some brief acquaintances. By the time I landed, I was inflated to a super-natural high, vowing to pay forward the same kind of support that had been given me. I try to “Make someone’s day, every day.”  Perhaps it’s just a smile to a stranger, lending a helping hand to a neighbor, sitting with a friend during chemo infusion, cooking (my favorite) for my family and friends, encouraging a young person in his/her career, or supporting my family and friends. This vow and my newly recognized inner voice guide my every day.

As a result, I am much more open to what comes floating by and attracts my attention, like the SCBWI conference in NY in February. My inner voice (from the heart) echoed, “You know you have always wanted to write. It’s now or never.”  So, I scratched my plans to play golf and visit friends in Florida this winter and registered for the conference. I couldn’t afford both (from the head).  So here I am, experiencing the wildest New England winter since arriving, compelled to share my experiences to encourage more expressions of gratitude in the world and to perhaps make your day and loving every minute. 

Advice whether or not you ask:  Listen to both your heart and your head, but act on your heart and you will be where you are supposed to be. 

Here is some hard evidence that retirement is a mixed bag, depending on how you approach it.  Maybe some of you have seen this video parody, “Baby Boomers Begin Collecting Their Social Security. . .” on Facebook, since it has over two million views. Please watch it now with a different eye. 

I laughed my a _ _ off the first time I saw it, but then realized that it is not really funny. It’s a sad treatise on stress as we age.  We were “Born to be Wild.”   What happened?   How did we lose that spunk that rocked the world and turned us into “Bored, Tubby, and Mild?”

We grew up, despite distrusting anyone over 30.  I distinctly recall my traumatic 30th birthday – I was suddenly someone who could not be trusted!  Talk about a major transition and I wasn’t at all prepared for that gap, but I adapted the best I could, sliding down that slippery slope into middle age, where stress takes over.  Maintaining relationships, raising children, holding jobs, and coping with life events was almost consuming. But, the ember never dies. When the nest is empty, and the job is gone or reduced, it is time to invite the oxygen in and fan the flames.  

My mother once said, "When you are old, you can say and do whatever you want.  Speak up.  It's your last chance!"  Decide what is really important to you and act on it.  Cleaning the basement can wait.  If you get too busy to ever clean out the basement, oh well.   Someone else will eventually do it! 

Getting older is no excuse to abandon your personality. Peel away the stress.  Do things that make you really happy.  Make sure you are laughing; it's good for your health. Although relationships, having children, holding jobs,  and major life events have tamed us, we are still the same Baby Boomers.  Enjoy this blast from the past video, Born to Be Wild by Steppenwolf, and forget bored, tubby, and mild.