Follow your heart
Your intuition
It will lead you in the right direction
Let go of your mind
Your intuition
Is easy to find
Just follow your heart, baby
This song puts so simply what is quite possibly one of the most difficult things to do in life. Following our intuition seems, well, counter intuitive to what our mind tells us.
Last night I had the pleasure of going to a local high school senior awards ceremony where my husband was asked to present a young woman with the same scholarship that he received 15 years ago. He did a wonderful presentation and this bright and enthusiastic senior was the 3rd in her family to receive the Evan's Scholarship which gives golf caddies a full tuition and housing scholarship to some of the Midwest's top universities.The school superintendent opened with a story of J.K. Rowling's 2008 Harvard Graduation Commencement Speech. For those who have not read or watched it I implore you to do so!
Last night I had the pleasure of going to a local high school senior awards ceremony where my husband was asked to present a young woman with the same scholarship that he received 15 years ago. He did a wonderful presentation and this bright and enthusiastic senior was the 3rd in her family to receive the Evan's Scholarship which gives golf caddies a full tuition and housing scholarship to some of the Midwest's top universities.The school superintendent opened with a story of J.K. Rowling's 2008 Harvard Graduation Commencement Speech. For those who have not read or watched it I implore you to do so!
Click to View Her Incredible Speech!
In a very abridged version Ms. Rowling did not follow her heart and was led in a very wrong direction. Her desire to write was superseded by the external push of her parents, spouse, and society to succeed in a more practical field. It wasn't until her life literally fell apart that she gave herself permission to follow her passion and her inner voice.
This reminded me on a much smaller and less dramatic scale of my own journey. I was an English Major who dreamed of writing. Since I was 7 years old and I was sent to a reading specialist to "catch up" with my peers, I have been reading anything I can get my hands on. From Highlights magazine to cereal boxes, then on to Mary Higgins Clark (which my parents did not approve of at 10 years old so I snuck the paperbacks at my grandma's house!),classics, and other fiction. I still enjoy nothing more than reading and this love eventually pushed me in a direction to write. While I have never fancied myself a novelist, I love to write short articles and dreamed of working as a journalist or writing for a magazine.
It was at 19 years old that I experienced the unfortunate combination of a professor who deemed himself a writing god and a boyfriend who enjoyed cutting down others that I began to experience the evil presence of self doubt. It's amazing how easily we let go of our dreams when others criticize us. Writing for a living began to seem unrealistic and I found myself making a minimal effort in school no longer having an end goal in mind. Upon graduating a couple years later I dabbled in retail and management before deciding that maybe I could share my love of reading and writing by teaching others.
This eventually led me to more college classes which I found myself excelling in. My passion had suddenly been rekindled. Now older and wiser, I worked tirelessly to glean as much as I could from my professors, mentors, fellow teachers, and peers. For the first time in my life I was excelling in school and maintaining a 4.0 GPA at the Master's level. Despite all of this growth though, it took one vice principle's recommendation that I would be better suited to teach 4th or 5th grade given my personality and enthusiasm for reading, to deter me from pursuing a pre-k or kindergarten position.
After co-teaching kindergarten for a year, I once again set off in the wrong direction and accepted a position to teach 4th grade at a high risk school. In the blink of an eye I went from loving what I did to hating nothing more than the sound of my alarm clock each morning signalling another day I would have to walk through the door of my classroom. The entire year I felt like a drone regurgitating lessons from the book I was mandated to "teach" from, handing out two scan tron style tests per week, and filling out endless reports of my student's test scores. There were no book studies, I had to cut out the 5 minutes a day I spent reading to the kids per the principles request for more writing practice, and the only joy I found was in planning reading centers where I was able to use my creativity for 30 minutes out of the school day.
Mix this in with an ever changing writing plan created by a paid consultant that was often emailed to me 10 minutes before my writing block, or a few times even dropped off to me 15 minutes after I had begun my lesson (and which was completely different than what had been previously decided upon!) and it was a recipe for heartbreak. Many of my students hated school, the entire year I only had 3 parent conferences show up (all of which were due to behavior problems), there was 15 minutes alotted for lunch which was often mandated as "silent lunch", several students missed upwards of 20 days of school, recess was not allowed past 1st grade, and the ages in my fourth grade classroom ranged from 9 years old to 13!
While that year was a valuable learning and growing experience, I only endured it because I had once again ignored my natural inclination to work with younger kids. For some reason I followed the advice of someone who barely knew me and had made a snap decision of my abilities based on the fact that I had been an English and not Elementary Ed major.
So here I am today, once again loving my life as I write these words and am able to express myself through blogging. Additionally after much soul searching and several long conversations with J, I have struck out on my own to begin an in-home pre-k program which is working wonderfully! My student's parents are thrilled, my students are thriving, and I am gearing up for the move to our new house this summer where I will have my very own 350 square foot studio space for passing on my love of reading, writing, and learning to young minds who spoil me daily with hugs, pictures, and words of endearment.
Since this is a new venture I make drastically less income than I did managing or teaching in a public school, but my business is growing and I am unbelievably happy. Now the only thing my alarm clock signals is another fulfilling day of watching my kids learn letter sounds, recognize shapes, colors, and numbers, garden at the rice table, dig for dinosaur bones, and sing their Macarena Months loud and off key for all the world to hear! So thank you Jewel, J.K. Rowling, and many others who have inspired me, thank you J, family, and friends who have supported me, and thank you to my heart for leading me in the right direction once I was able to turn off my mind and follow my intuition.
After co-teaching kindergarten for a year, I once again set off in the wrong direction and accepted a position to teach 4th grade at a high risk school. In the blink of an eye I went from loving what I did to hating nothing more than the sound of my alarm clock each morning signalling another day I would have to walk through the door of my classroom. The entire year I felt like a drone regurgitating lessons from the book I was mandated to "teach" from, handing out two scan tron style tests per week, and filling out endless reports of my student's test scores. There were no book studies, I had to cut out the 5 minutes a day I spent reading to the kids per the principles request for more writing practice, and the only joy I found was in planning reading centers where I was able to use my creativity for 30 minutes out of the school day.
Mix this in with an ever changing writing plan created by a paid consultant that was often emailed to me 10 minutes before my writing block, or a few times even dropped off to me 15 minutes after I had begun my lesson (and which was completely different than what had been previously decided upon!) and it was a recipe for heartbreak. Many of my students hated school, the entire year I only had 3 parent conferences show up (all of which were due to behavior problems), there was 15 minutes alotted for lunch which was often mandated as "silent lunch", several students missed upwards of 20 days of school, recess was not allowed past 1st grade, and the ages in my fourth grade classroom ranged from 9 years old to 13!
While that year was a valuable learning and growing experience, I only endured it because I had once again ignored my natural inclination to work with younger kids. For some reason I followed the advice of someone who barely knew me and had made a snap decision of my abilities based on the fact that I had been an English and not Elementary Ed major.
So here I am today, once again loving my life as I write these words and am able to express myself through blogging. Additionally after much soul searching and several long conversations with J, I have struck out on my own to begin an in-home pre-k program which is working wonderfully! My student's parents are thrilled, my students are thriving, and I am gearing up for the move to our new house this summer where I will have my very own 350 square foot studio space for passing on my love of reading, writing, and learning to young minds who spoil me daily with hugs, pictures, and words of endearment.
Since this is a new venture I make drastically less income than I did managing or teaching in a public school, but my business is growing and I am unbelievably happy. Now the only thing my alarm clock signals is another fulfilling day of watching my kids learn letter sounds, recognize shapes, colors, and numbers, garden at the rice table, dig for dinosaur bones, and sing their Macarena Months loud and off key for all the world to hear! So thank you Jewel, J.K. Rowling, and many others who have inspired me, thank you J, family, and friends who have supported me, and thank you to my heart for leading me in the right direction once I was able to turn off my mind and follow my intuition.
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