I worked with one for three years. We both taught middle school and 9th grade English. When she joined our faculty, I thought I’d help her navigate the ins and outs of the school, but she absorbed the culture in 30 seconds. Our lesson plans and instruction were essentially the same, as we fed off of each other’s ideas. Weirdly, we resembled each other. Sometimes students got us confused, joking that we were the same person. I would laugh it off pretending it was a silly comment, but I liked hearing that. I took it as a compliment because I…

I was finally able to sit down with my husband and listen to him. He’s a hospital worker. He’s not a doctor or nurse, but an employee who is in charge of the hospital’s supplies, from toothbrushes to pacemakers. On March 11th, when his hospital ramped up preparations for its COVID surge, his manager said that everyone in his department was expected to work overtime and not take time off for the foreseeable future. Since then, he’s worked many, many hours throughout this crisis without any hazard pay or a raise.

I’ve only talked with my husband for brief stints…

Life is so much easier when you shed your myopic vision and see the big picture in situations.

One of the gifts of adulthood is being able to handle disappointment with reason and perspective.

In this pandemic crisis, school administrators are scrambling to make decisions about issues that never before crossed their desks. Decisions about prom, graduation, and other school traditions are in the crosshairs of our country’s quarantine. Not only are many schools faced with unprecedented problems that need important, prompt solutions, but they must find solutions based on an uncertain future.

Important questions like how to celebrate graduations…

By dying on the same day, they have a permanence, a synchronicity, a bond- all things that were so painfully absent for my mother most of her life.

I'll never forget the words my friend said to me when I told her I broke up with my boyfriend, whom I loved a lot. We were 27, and while she was freshly engaged to a nice man, I was trying to navigate a serious relationship with my boyfriend. Until one day I unexpectedly stopped dating him. When I told my friend that I broke up with Dave, she felt bad for me and assured me that he wasn’t a great prize to be lost. Then her voice became soft and lilting when she said the words-

“You don’t have…

I’ve avoided the mall for years, but recently I went, and something felt different. I couldn’t put my finger on what had changed since my younger days when I cruised the mall, but there was definitely a different vibe. Then it hit me — I realized that store windows displayed images of models that looked remarkably different from what I was used to seeing. For once, the models smiling at me from vivid, 6 ft high poster boards in storefronts looked like real people. Everyone looked beautifully familiar and pleasant, with faces and bodies that were perfectly relatable.

What a…

The One Thing Teachers Can Do To Build Student Confidence — Find Their “Thing” and Tell Them About It

Noticing kids’ personal strengths makes them more powerful- give comments, not compliments

By knowing their “thing,” they began to define themselves and develop a new type of confidence.

“Great job! ``’’ Way to go!” “Keep It Up!” This boring first sentence should seem pretty familiar. Does it remind you of the stickers that teachers put on tests and schoolwork when you were little? Probably. They’re all compliments we‘ve heard growing up because they’re compliments that are mindlessly said to students over the years. …