…that you need. It is all right here.

Every day that goes by I learn something more by young people that I am lucky enough that surround me.

Be it Cross Country ( A personal love of mine), life as a teacher, librarians, paraeducator, parent, booster, a HUNDRED other roles, there are THOUSANDS of reasons to be too busy to treasure the countless moments that are MAGIC moments that are so easily missed with too many bad karma in politics, pandemic worries, and yes, a thousand more controversial reasons to miss priceless moments.

Advice – push all aside and make the things that weigh us down, there are a hundred sleepers – individuals who do indeed get weighed down by the thousands of reason to get weighed done- BUT, if you are risky and daring enough, you will shed those aspects that try to weigh you down, and you will feel, yes, but the more that tries to weigh you down, the more you can rise above it.

Excuses are many, true independent hearts are few.

I have been extremely lucky to be surrounded by young, aspiring, and talented young future leaders – they are the future. Each of us can choose to talk, argue, and spend our time and watch the moments you could be spending with these individuals on the sidelines being just a spectator, or being an active part to push their possibilities forward. I choose the latter, and thank goodness so many around us choose the latter as well.

I have learned the hard way, there is no room for those that choose the back seat, positive approaches to improving what is around us and available, those that decide to take advantage of those opportunities, and be a part of them? That is what sets us apart for stagnation. Howe luck are we to witness such things each day? Beyond measure.

Amid the 25 day push up challenge thanks to my former principal Mr. Clarence Davis, you would have noticed two posts ago I commented on the realizations that occur prepping for, during, and after the pushups themselves.

As the borders of coincidence are often shattered as I notice around me, this amazing podcast about this topic is AMAZING.

The novel Eat a Peach, by David Chang, sounds amazing and from the podcast, the topics of the loss of Anthony Bourdain, the amazing outlook looked at – check out the listen at 6:07 in this podcast –

AND reinforcing the fact that looking at mental illness, depression, and anxiety is

“someone as commonplace as someone using an inhaler to help breath better.”

This is an amazing look at how a chef, the restaurant business, and the food world itself is subject to the topic of mental illness, anxiety, and depression with a further look.

While I was always wondering when I would try to get back in shape, I was not planning on this challenge to do so, but yet, I also have realized along with my physical stamina affected positively, the ability to help myself and others with issues that affect us mentally, on a positive level, is a whole new level of health that is often considered taboo and should not be.

I bet this will be a terrific book – Eat a Peach

WILD RAIDER FOLK!

HAPPY LABOR DAY holiday weekend! 🙂  I KNOW it is a holiday so DO take the holiday and provide an easing into the things you need to so – this is vital to be a successful Raider- trust me, I know!

I made my latest blog post just for you – so hope you like it 🙂

I received something from Raider Heather Kerrick, who works at the Woodbridge Early Childhood Education Center, and Phillis Wheatley Middle School, provided the attached resources that will be added to the current online resource page.

FYI- some of the attached resources are elementary skills, BUT – I have noticed – if you provide something elementary to students that can tackle, then adding the advanced concept seems to be received easier and with less frustration 🙂

Also, please remember -the WHS Library Media Center is a resource for YOU and the students.  Yes I try to balance novels, nonfiction, maps, artwork, technology, literature, rent the video camera and tripod, use the DVD’s, VHS player (believe it or not), DVD players, audio books, those huge rip away paper display boards and MORE for YOU as faculty AND for students.  If you have suggestions, PLEASE ask.  This is a resource to allow you to settle your mind, be able to plan and teach better, and receive support, it is NOT simply just for students – you are welcome ANYTIME – to just chat, to just clear your mind, to learn how to work through something, and how to plan something out, or needing a plan to do something, and well, anything you need  (Even posters and such 🙂  )

Please check out the links that exists next to my profile pic 🙂https://www.whsraiders.net/apps/staff/

or the library page itself: https://www.whsraiders.net/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=438829&type=d

and the WHS Library Media Center toolbox page itself:https://sites.google.com/view/wilc-extensions/home

It is exciting to see that faculty from other schools can work together to help each other – not just within our building.  I always feel that there is so much isolation from Kent and New Castle County to Sussex County, and there should not be. 

If we were collaborating / sharing all the time, no matter the type of school – the location of the school, and /or the level  we teach – and breaking down the walls of being afraid to ask – being geographically isolating due to stereotypes of being a “better district” than another, etc – things would be so much easier for all of us – but the cool thing is we have each other – and we have YOU!  so we are better already 🙂

Excited to have you as part of the team and hope by sharing and collaborating with those in and out of our own classes, we all grow and see how a disparaging pandemic can be an opportunity to help everyone grow!  🙂 

Where does the past, when you do not expect it, lead you to a better tomorrow?

Few times I like to completely bare exactly how I feel – but there are moments when it was just the right thing to do.

In this very difficult time we find ourselves in that can bring so many to places of no return – often the past is the most important thing we have to remind ourselves, a better tomorrow depend on the pasts we all have had.

Too many times in my life I have seen, heard, felt, and experienced individuals that think only of one thing, themselves. I have also born witness to the fact that those people have so many ups and downs in their lives, they, to me seem pitiful, sad, alone, and stealing moments from others that deserve so much more.

As I find myself in the middle of a 25 pushup a day challenge for 25 days, it is QUITE easy to trivialize this into the social media square of a social media stint that is 1 of 30 000 we see in the social media frenzy we see today.

Yet, as I was working through my second day of 25 pushups and realizing how out of shape I was …

…I was taken back to a rainy, night, late, being called from a dear and troubled friend who needed someone to talk to, and as of late he kept repeating the mantra that he felt no reason for life as he was experiencing it, and my continued mantra reassuring him his life DID matter, despite the hurdle after hurdle experience he was facing – several days later I received a call in the wee hours of the AM from his parents informing me he had just committed suicide and that splitting, empty moment, still reappears to me on the rainiest of rainy nights. I still go back over and over wishing I had done many things differently and would have traded the self destructive relationship I was in at the time for moments that I felt would have mattered to change the paths that had unraveled at that moment in time.

Flashbacks of how devastated I was to realize my Father had suddenly disappeared from my life and all the things I had taken for granted and never had said, because we just became used to how we were around each other, never vocally putting into words certain sentiments – and the feeling that we would always have the time to say and do what we wanted. I distinctly remember at that point knowing I was already changed and inside felt as if I w as always simply drifting, not really ever knowing how to take what had happened and get past that second major loss. I also distinctly remember vowing to live a life that would easily symbolize two other’s lives, those representing my friend David, and for my Dad.

I distinctly remember a day in Mexico City, watching the Presidential election, hearing the words that put down, disgraced, and defamed individuals that had took me in as family, fed me when I often had little to nothing on the table as I learned my way, individuals that did not match the very description that was being painted by a future leader of a country a continent away. I was ashamed, I felt betrayed, I felt as if my life had it not been in the proper location, would have been at risk as being lumped into having those same sentiments as being a representative of a country that was putting down those in a country that had taken me in, embraced me, saved me, and looked out for me. I never have quite forgotten how those words, actions, and persona made me feel and know to this day I would have never realized that feeling had I not actually been in Mexico at the time.

12th grade- I distinctly remember being told by my Guidance counselor that it was a good thing that I was as in the situation that programs existed that would accept kids like me that were too poor to go onto college. I vaguely remember the way it made me feel, making me feel as if I had very little to offer for any type of bright and potential future. I had always not really taken school seriously and considered it nothing more than a large social experience, because I craved and loved being around people so much, and never had been reinforced from parents that school was the most important thing and everything else came after. It had always been about the people in our lives and then everything else came after. I would not realize until much later how that feeling and what would be a challenge to prove that guidance counselor wrong, and that would serve me well, and help me find my way amid a chaotic and unplanned path, and to this day it has served as my conscious compass.

The time my high school friend and I would often sit around the table in the evening, and believe it or not, with my Mom, and we would go round and round rehashing how he should not be so hard on himself because despite being “good enough” for someone who turned his affections aside, he had so much to offer anyone – he just could never accept it because the one person he longed to have kindness returned to, refused to acknowledge what we saw in him. He was, and still is, one of the funniest and smartest individuals I have ever met, he deserves the self esteem of a mountain.

I remember the last time I saw my brother and sisters before I lost them to cancer and also recall how amazingly timely it was that I had decided to return to the United States from Mexico, and not knowing this would unfold in front of me. If I would not have been able to see either of them when I did, I now feel I would not have been able to come to terms with the period I had found myself gone for the length of time I had been gone. The same year I had returned from Mexico, the very individual who had hired me in Mexico, and represented everything I was seen and loved about taking time to give everyone a moment, the long-standing individual who had come to represent everything I knew and felt about The American School Foundation, had passed away shortly after taking his absence from a position he had held for what had seemed the life of the school itself.

I could go on and one and not just tell my stories, but relate the life altering stories of students I met and knew relied on meals we found for them and their families, the heartaches of abuse, neglect, bullying, and so many more things that fill the world we find ourselves in now that truly tie themselves to the issues of depression, anxiety and mental illness. There is not a day that goes by that I do not see Dane’s (my rescued pitbull/boxer mix) eyes look into mine, and remember the night he came to me bloody, in a box, saved from a group of people kicking him trying to break his ribs, running him over for a car – a man who ran into the middle of this bunch and rescued him risking his own life, and driving three hours to my apartment in Mexico, and me 98% sure this poor shaking, bloody dog would not make it until the next day and now, years later, seeing him thrive and eat up any and all attention he could receive from everyone he met.

I am only on day 5 of the pushup challenge and see this realization of what can be, and yet what some people are satisfied with and stand by and do nothing but hurt, inflict negativity, continue to thrive on talking down others, holding grudges, bringing others down, refusing to meet each other in the middle, refusing to respect each other’s right to agree to disagree, and simply stain a life that could be so positive, and make it so negative.

With every piece of trash I pick up, every friend I take time out of my life to bring up, provide a good day for, and simply try to think of another, each of the above that have become a part of my past, that could have led to a continued state of depression, anxiety, and a prolonged state of mental illness, thank goodness did not thanks to the family, friends, students, colleagues, and so many more that believed I could get through some pretty dire moments I never saw myself getting through. Ever.

I simply wish more people would use social media, use their day, use their time off, use their holidays, use their pasts to pass along., pay forward kindnesses that will stay with those around them and bring others up and push them into a better tomorrow, rather than taking the energy, time, and initiative to bring others down that they might not see eye to eye with, or agree with, or consider below their station in life.

What do YOU do with these life changing moments and the chance to improve someone else’s life, instead of always looking how to make a better day, life, year, moment for yourself? One of the largest discoveries I have made in the life is to live as if I have no more days left, and as I have been trying to live the life of at least two others, if not more, I have found my life has been positive and better thanks to the time I have taken for others along the way.

In a time when it is too easy to be divisive, isolating, vengeful, and selfish, the time to consider those effects on others, other than yourself, and realize the very real aspects of mental illness, anxiety, and depression will lead each of us along very different paths. What will YOU do with that realization? Tear down the world and those around you or choose to bring others up and change the world around us for the better? As for me- I have some pushups to do – and am grateful for the chance to recall how I have been able to make it this far in my life thanks to the sacrifices so many have been willing to give for me.

Day #5 of the 25 pushup challenge, here I come…and the person I challenge tonight is…well you will just have to check it out on my – yep you got it, Facebook page 🙂 Here’s to bettering the world around us for thinking of others along the way, in a time we need it most.

Receiving emails and calls from students in personal crisis – full of anxiety, concerns and worries at all hours, well…

I know I get criticism sometimes for having too many candles burning at the same time, but this is the thing. Many forget that being an educator means there are times you need to have an open line at all times because some students need that open line- and of course, sometimes people shut those doors at 2:45, but life doesn’t – I always considered that the difference between a teacher and an educator. Life doesn’t allow a cleanly clipped end time for those worries and concerns to fall into a neat, timed period.

Never feel you cannot continue to reach out to me anytime – yes I get stressed, yes I always add a list of things to do larger than is realistic within a day – SOMETIMES – but through it all – the reason I am able to have the success in a profession that is challenging most days and not for the weak of heart – and often as transparent as the time willing to be spent in that same profession – is because of YOU. Hang in there, because know, even through the toughest of times, the phone line/email is open and you always have an ally. You have made some of my hardest days so easy with hilarity, laughter, and optimism.

You keep me going forward on days sometimes I do not feel I can do anything – and along the way, I have had some amazing supporters of my philosophy despite its craziness – it all comes back and helps you move forward on some of those rough days – thank you!

Walking along Woodland Road, the stretch from in front of Invista, past Chapel Branch Nature Trail, until the road ends in the Woodland Ferry area, you might not see the space off to the side of the road.  I am more an avid watcher of these areas from trying to keep the litter and garbage off this stretch of road as well as the Chapel Branch Nature And Vince Morris Trail.

Today, unfortunately, over four bags of garbage were strewn all over plants in the front of the parking  lot, beer bottles, cups, and garbage thrown all along the sides of the streams, and people took time to carve the usual obscene messages about their body parts that they probably wish they had.

In my mind I wonder, is this the reflection they want others to think of Delaware when they visit such nature trails?  Is this what they want younger children to see as they are out and about nature?  What further cemented this thought in my mind was the condoms that are strewn all over the nature and I thought, “Trust me, if you are this less intelligent to not know how to clean up after yourself, let alone know how to properly dispose of garbage, you think you have the smarts for using a condom?  Good luck with that buddy…”

What is a further kicker is you have individuals such as Mr Beiser, 91 years old picking up garbage from those who are trashier than the garbage left behind, individuals who take ATVS’s and gouge out native plants and trails, and take posts and benches restored by local youth organizations and raise anything of value that is valuable, now during Covid, to ruin.

I understand there are  some pretty disgusting people in this world, butit deflates me even more that we have some of the trashiest, ugliest, foulest people in our community that leave this reflection of what represents our community, whether we like it or not.  Further, every three days I fill up at least 3 garbage bags that are whiskey bottles, beer cans, soda cans, family packs of McDonald’s food wrappings, Dunkin Donuts bags, Arby’s sauce packets, and lots and lots of Wawa bags.  Mainly these establishments.  I  have no desire AT ALL to frequent these establishments after seeing how much of their garbage is thrown out of the car,  garbage people who consume and think it is okay to open the window, throw as far as you can into anything green and growing outside of your vehicle. I understand that the establishments have no control of the garbage people who litter and what they do with their trash, however, it WOULD be nice, as community members to use their presence to air advertisements and requests to dispose of their garbage in the proper place, and not ruin the natural environments around us – to reflect those who treasure these areas.

Yes, every other day, three to four garbage bags, those that care will continue to clean up after people who are as sick as the Covid that surrounds us, those that do not realize their garbage becomes our garbage just because they see this as the best way. It seems logical we have so many endangered species, animals, wildlife, forest, and environment when this type of attitude is the most dominant when you are present in nature trails, but it is disheartening to see how this reflects us as a state when it is being said every day, despite attempts to clean our own backyards up.  I am one that believes we are lucky to have this state of Delaware, the natural spaces we are lucky enough to have amid such a pandemic as we are in, and do indeed hope that those that continue to destroy the last remaining resources we have and can enjoy, and are restored by our youth, will have enough intellect from now until they age, that they can do better, for their state, for future generations, for their community.   One can only hope.