It All Comes Down to Two Choices
How do You Decide?
Many family members, friends, and colleagues have recently expressed feelings of being overwhelmed by the decisions that face them in this time of uncertainty, even chaos.
It’s all about perspective.
As a freshman in college, I entered my dorm room one day to find my roommate sitting on the floor, crying. When I asked why she cried, she exclaimed, “I don’t know what to wear!” We were at midterms, and she was exhausted and overwhelmed with college life, which had nothing to do with her wardrobe. At that moment, I developed a philosophy that I have used in classrooms and boardrooms since that day.
You have two choices.
I looked at her on the floor and said, “Ok, you have two choices.” This was how the conversation went:
Me: Do you want to dress up or dress down? (It was rainy and cold outside.) Her: (sniffling) “I don’t want to dress up.” (We pushed all the skirts, dresses, and nice outfits aside.) Me: Jeans or corduroys? (This was in the early 80s). Her: (sitting up, but still sniffling) Jeans. Me: Bellbottoms or straight legs? Her: Straight legs
Suddenly, we had the bottom half done; she only had one pair of straight leg jeans. We repeated this process to figure out what to wear on top, and by the end, she was calm, dressed, and ready to go to class.
EVERYTHING can be narrowed down to two choices.
As a classroom teacher, I would introduce this philosophy, and the students would ALWAYS argue - not everything. Pick a topic, any topic. Teaching high school, college choice was always a favorite and an easy one. Do you want to live close to home or far away? Far away – take out all the schools in this state. Do you like cold weather or warm weather? Cold – take out everything south of the Mason–Dixon line. Do you want a large school or a small one? Large – take out all of the small colleges. Inevitably we would reach a choice of two to three schools for each student.
"In any given moment we have two options: to step forward into growth or step back into safety." - Abraham Maslow
Breathe – look at the broadest element of your decision and whittle down from there.
Many of us are facing 100s of decisions. Important decisions. Every day. Right now, in these uncertain times, we have two choices – do we educate students or not? We will educate them. We will keep their best interests at heart. And we will continue to persevere with innovative, creative, and purposeful instruction. We are educators, and for those of you in the trenches, the classrooms, administrative offices, and halls of education that do not hear it nearly enough – Thank you for the work you are doing for the children in this country.
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