Another Monday, friends! Welcome to week 4 of Care & Equity. This will be our last week in the module before we take a week off the first week of July and following that, we will reconvene asynchronously as one big group for the Designing for Education module.
If you would like a suggested structure for this week, here is a link to last week’s dispatch.
At this point in the module, I always circle back to boundaries. Boundaries are some of the most difficult things to learn and enact but make a world of difference when it comes to being fully present for ourselves and others. This past academic year was a difficult and chaotic year that really threw me for a loop. It forced me to acknowledge just how much caring was truly involved in my work– and when that goes unregulated, it truly becomes a drain on you. As a recovering people-pleaser, boundaries are truly some of the most difficult things for me to express. But in reality, they are the things most within my own personal control when everything around me feels out of control. I may not be able to fix all of the institution’s looming issues overnight, but I can give myself just a bit of time back in my day to catch up on notes, catch up on emails, maybe stop looking at my emails, or just to catch my breath. Will it fix everything? No, there will always be a problem that needs to be solved. This just allows me time to slow down and consider if I’m even the right person to solve the problem at all.
What I’m taking into this next year is making boundaries and self-care a true practice, meaning I will save this time every day to step away, reset, check in with myself, and then get back to it. Showing up for myself in this way builds trust in myself.
Catherine Denial ends her “Kindness Towards Self” chapter of A Pedagogy of Kindness with:
“This is not about doing yoga, listening to a great piece of music, or sitting outside for five minutes and listening to birdsong (although those are all wondering things to do). It’s about making a promise to ourselves that we are worthy of care and that our colleagues are as well. It’s about committing ourselves to the work of justice on our campuses in every place we touch. It’s about reconciliation, forgiveness, and accountability. It’s about saying yes and owning our no to create the conditions under which we can be the teachers we and our students deserve.” (Denial, pg. 39)
Have a lovely rest of your week, my friends!