One of my favorite pieces of advice I was given by a mindfulness teacher was to, "Stop shoulding all over yourself." This year, above any other year, feels like a time to really practice this.

I have been reading more and more articles coming out about the mental health and relational struggles that both educators and young people are facing this year. I have been seeing it within our walls.

What if, instead of believing we as educators "should" be able to handle this better, or our students "should" be behaving differently/performing better/acting less bananas, we just deeply acknowledged that things are hard. Let go of the "should." The only thing that is true is what is.

What if the myriad of ways we have each responded are actually totally reasonable and natural given the conditions of a global pandemic, a two year long disruption to our "normal" with no end in sight, not to mention our own personal struggles?

And from that acknowledgement, instead of pretending and wishing and "shoulding" things to be different, how do we treat ourselves? How do we respond to one another?