![\"Chuck](\"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Chuck-Sandy192-150x150.jpg\")
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I\u2019ve long been a collector of quotes, and ever since finding a copy of From The Margins of A Grey Notebook<\/a> by the poet and archivist Eric Sackhiem, I\u2019ve always meant to keep a notebook full to the margins with them, just like he did.<\/p>\n Doing that is one of my resolutions for this year. Meanwhile, as I\u2019m also a fan of acrostics and in awe of Jeffery Doonan\u2019s recent An Acrostic For Professionalism<\/a> on the iTDi Blog, I thought I\u2019d try to pull together quotes I\u2019ve collected on scraps of paper and turn them into an acrostic of my own for A Happy New Year.<\/p>\n A<\/span>ll grown-ups were once children… but only few of them remember it<\/i>\u201d, wrote Antoine de Saint-Exupery in The Little Prince<\/a>. He wasn\u2019t, but very well could have been, writing to the teachers of young learners and all others, reminding them to remember what it\u2019s like to learn in joyful ways and be full of awe about the world and its wonders. Think back. Take yourself there. Remember. Now, teach that way.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n H<\/span>ow we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives <\/i>says Annie Dillard<\/a>, and I\u2019m grateful that I\u2019ve gotten to spend my entire life as a learner and my entire adult life as a teacher.\u00a0 Now that I\u2019m 55 with days no longer structured by class schedules and curricula, I realize even more how much each moment matters, how days add up, and then that\u2019s it. How best to spend the days? It\u2019s up to you to decide. Thank you for using this moment to read this post. When you finish, what will you do next, and why? What does it matter? What will you learn? How is that going to move you forward or enrich your now<\/i>? Pause. Ponder. Do.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A<\/span>lways do what you are afraid to do, <\/i>wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson<\/a> in one of his essays, and though doing what scares us is never easy, it\u2019s always worth doing. I tell myself this again and again. So often it\u2019s fear that\u2019s held me back from trying something new, making a change, taking a stand, and doing what\u2019s right. But then, after leaping through a fear, I usually wind up amazed that I\u2019ve neither fallen too far or too hard. When I have fallen far and hard, it\u2019s been what I needed to do in order to stand up again in a new way. This year, take a risk. Step through fear. Leap.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n P<\/span>resence is far more intricate and rewarding an art than productivity<\/i> wrote Maria Popova recently on Brainpickings<\/a> on a day when I was offering a teacher advice on classroom management \u2013 a term I\u2019ve never liked very much. \u00a0The Popova quote helped me see that the greatest teachers I\u2019ve had or observed are the ones who are wholly present for their students. They have no classroom management <\/i>problems because in the classroom they are entirely there. How do they do that? I\u2019m sure you know teachers like this. Ask them. When I\u2019ve asked, I\u2019ve found most have a learnable strategy for becoming and staying present in the classroom. Find one of these teachers, model their strategies, and then adapt and make them your own.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n P<\/span>eople are just as wonderful as sunsets if you let them be. When I look at a sunset, I don’t find myself saying, \u2018Soften the orange a bit on the right hand corner.\u2019 I don’t try to control a sunset. I watch with awe as it unfolds, <\/i>wrote the psychologist Carl Rodgers<\/a> in On Becoming A Person<\/a>, and as I read that again I thought, \u201cwell, of course\u201d but then cringed remembering how often I\u2019ve worked to change people in various ways, not understanding that I was actually working to change myself through them. Being a teacher means accepting others as they are, while offering up tools that can take them farther, then as Rogers says, stepping back to watch in awe as they unfold to become even more who they are.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Y<\/span>our hand opens and closes, opens and closes<\/i>, writes Rumi<\/a> and the poem goes on to say \u201cIf it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds’ wings\u201d\u00a0<\/i>and this is the best quote I know about the giving and receiving that is teaching and learning.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n N<\/span>ever doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has<\/i>\u201d said Margaret Mead<\/a> and when we define world as one person, one classroom, or one community, we begin to realize the power we have as teachers to make a difference \u2013 especially when we band together though initiatives like iTDi<\/a> to encourage and support each other.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n E<\/span>verybody is a genius, <\/i>said Albert Einstein \u201cbut if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid<\/i>,\u201d so stop doing that. If it\u2019s in you, take a stand against standardized testing. If you\u2019re in the US, speak out about the Common Core. In every classroom, let people shine in the ways they do.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n W<\/span>e don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are\u201d wrote Anais Nin<\/a> which goes to explain how our view of the same classroom over time changes as we change. It\u2019s good to remember that what we see is just a reflection of who we are.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Y<\/span>ou have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who’ll decide where to go..<\/i>. wrote Dr. Suess<\/a>, so just remember that.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n E<\/span>arth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books<\/i>\u201d wrote John Lubbock<\/a> in a book that\u2019s aptly titled The Pleasures Of Life<\/a> and is available in digital form free. Just click the link, but before you do, go outside and have a look around.\u00a0 See what you can see and learn what you can learn.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A<\/span>nd above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it<\/i> wrote Roald Dahl<\/a> in The Minpins<\/a>, and this is an important thing to remember whether or not you\u2019re a teacher, but especially if you are.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n R<\/span>emember that everyone you meet is afraid of something, loves something and has lost something<\/i>, says H. Jackson Brown Jr. in Life’s Little Instruction Book<\/a>, and this is a good thing to remember whenever you wonder why the people in your classrooms and all around you act the way they do and do the things they do. It\u2019s because they\u2019re people, just like you.\u00a0 My parents gave me Life\u2019s Little Instruction Book<\/i> one Christmas 30 years ago, and on that day I underlined this quote. Then, I put the book away and forgot about it.\u00a0 I would have been a better teacher as well as a better person all these years if I\u2019d done a better job of remembering this simple truth: everyone you meet is afraid of something, loves something and has lost something. <\/i>\u00a0Still, it\u2019s not too late, is it? There\u2019s a whole year ahead, still a lot to learn, and though those 13 add up to A Happy New Year,<\/b> there\u2019s a postscript:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n PS:<\/b> The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there<\/i> writes L.P. Hartley in The Go Between. It’s like T.S. Elliot says in Little Gidding: For last year’s words belong to last year’s language, and next year’s words await another voice<\/i>. If there’s any looking back, it’s in silent gratitude. A year’s end marks a moment in the ineffable journey thru eternity, and not yet fluent in the language, all we can do is breathe in & breathe out grateful thanks as we speed past, and renew our commitment to becoming more fluent in kindness, more patient in our learning, more gentle in our teaching, and more able to be a conduit of the light that is love.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s do that. \u00a0I\u2019ll be trying my wavery best.<\/p>\n 13 Quotes For A Happy New Year – Chuck Sandy I\u2019ve long been a collector of quotes, and ever since finding a copy of From The Margins of A Grey Notebook by the poet and archivist Eric Sackhiem, I\u2019ve always meant to keep a notebook full to the margins with them, just like he … Continue reading 13 for 2014 – Chuck Sandy<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1908,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-13-for-2014"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3803"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7273,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3803\/revisions\/7273"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"http:\/\/itdi.pro\/itdihome\/images\/blogimages\/chuck030114.jpg\")
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