Whispering Shadow

I have spoken a lot about the choices of my kids on my blog. As I approach the final lap of my journey in the classroom, I have been reflecting more deeply on my own choices. It is the choices that I make that I make now that will be my enduring legacy on my students. Till August last year, my co-fellow and I had managed to effectively drive the love of learning, immaculate classroom systems, urgent and thorough collaborative planning, mind-boggling consistency in teacher action and a sense of belonging to a team working towards a shared vision. My classroom was on a path of transformation. Starting September, everything started going downhill. My thought partner, co-teacher and friend quit the school team. My stable class that was on its tipping point of its journey went through three configuration changes. And while all this was happening, I got married and chased my dream job to further take my focus away from the classroom.  If I look back at the last few months, ...

I love listening to music on my iPod while looking out of the window of a vehicle. The ability to set the tone to a mundane scene of city hustle bustle is empowering. The reason for the empowerment is abstract though (as always is the case with my posts :-P) Only God can use the play, rewind, forward, pause and stop buttons of life. How you want to perceive life around you is only your prerogative. Someone else is listening to a different score on your life too. Thus, feel free to indulge in this harmless pleasure and amuse thy self. The truth is incomplete without your interpretation.

We travel in the fast lane. We work. We work a lot. Not that we do it for nothing- some yearn, some earn, some learn. Working is good but conditionally, the condition being you are doing what you love to do. With most of us, we don't know what we love. By the time we do, it is too late to take that path. We then end up making what we do, what we love to do. There is no questioning that - compromises are inevitable and for some, permanent. While our lives revolve around work, we lose touch with our ability to follow our gut in matters not related to work. We begin to build a cage of comfort and security around ourselves. By the time we realize we are caged, it is too late. We have neither the courage nor strength to break free. We can either get depressed about it or work on building the courage and strength. And where do we find them both? The answer lies in creativity. The best creator is perhaps God and nature is his magnum opus. Not many of us have the eye for the lessons hidden...

Dear Love, I hear you have been busy. I don't know if you know but you have recently visited (or in some case revisited) some of my friends and infected them with the affliction that they don't understand. How can they feel self assured with your presence in their life if they can't comprehend you? If they can't find assurance themselves, they look towards their friends, ordinary people like me, who to say the least can only give them a third person's perspective on the whole issue. How can a third person give a perspective on how love should be? How can anyone define it? Isn't it unique to every two people who are or have ever been in love? The irony is that they think you have to be understood before they can embrace you, while it is the embrace that brings the understanding. On another note, the more I hear of you, the more I wonder what makes you tick in the hearts of people. Why a person chooses another can never be fully explained by anyone, including th...

Call me a cribber, but I am not the one who will take mediocrity in my stride. Unfortunately, we live in a world where people love mediocrity. Not that they can't strive for change, but they don't want to do it. Right from college where we are stuck with an ancient education system to sports where we are still proud of being 46th in the points tally of the Olympic games, the sense of complacency is programmed in our genes. Do we not have the spark? We all do, but we let it die. We are not quick enough to light the fire while it lasts. Each one of us has ideas. Each one of us has plans. Who will fear embarassment in case of failure? Isn't it better to remaining at the same position in the ladder than two steps lower? The fear of failure overshadows the reason why one would suport a bright idea, forget coming up with it. Most of the time when there is an opinion poll, say of 10 people, there will be two who agree, two who disagree and the remaining six won't have any...