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I keep wondering why Aguilar uses the language of warfare and resistance/resilience to frame the mentoring relationship. I realize a lot of teachers feel this way about their schools and the bureaucracies that drive them, but this is not the way things should be. She is absolutely right when she says we need to respond in ways which make us agents of change rather than victims, but I do not see how the middle ground of "resilience" is the right answer. After centuries of repression and oppression which native people have endured for centuries (including death camps where infesting Indians with smallpox was part of a final solution strategy), the native people I work with everyday respond differently to each of their situations: some choose to become agents of change and exercise their sovereign rights with gusto, while others at the other extreme exercise passive resistance and find a million ways to buck the system that binds them (and each of us to some degree at this time in history where there are many more "have nots" than "haves." For me as an educational planner and grant writer as much as a teacher-leader, I have chosen agency over resilience and over victimization. The system needs changing, and having the wherewithal to generate money to build new and different schools is very empowering, but it also raises the possibility that the next generation schools we are creating -- even though they may be tribally authorized and tribally-controlled -- may soon become just as bureaucratic and overpowering as the schools of the nineteenth century which many of our current systems continue to emulate. Somehow, resilience seems very passive to me: "getting your mind right" rather than "getting the system right." I applaud my colleagues who have made bold decision at great personal risk to leave systems that are broken; hopefully, they will move on to new systems where they are the agents of change and exercise greater control like Aguilar herself decided to do.

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Prior to starting this course, I was trying to find my purpose. I was looking for it to become crystal clear to me. This course has helped me understand that "[...] purpose is found in every moment of living" (p. 312). People who are resilient find meaning in every moment. They choose their attitude in whatever situation they are in. This is where their power lies, and this power can never be taken away from them. They are able to uncover their potential, their skills and abilities, and to contribute them to the world. In the process, they find joy and meaning and help others find their joy and potential. They lovingly replenish their internal spring of resilience by practicing specific habits daily that pave the way for acquiring resilient dispositions. They are thriving.

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Three quotes from this chapter really stuck with me. The first was that the last of the human freedoms is to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances. That's it right there. No matter what is happening around me, I still have my freedom by choosing my response to what is happening to me. I have a quote on my wall I use with students that talks about their power coming from how they respond to situations they cannot control. I love it so much because it gives them (and me) strength. It shows that I always have a choice, which leads to the next quote. It says that right now, in the moment, I have choice in how I respond. This is how I cultivate my resilience and I do so because it allow me to thrive and contribute towards helping others thrive (my final favorite quote). It's an all-time great "what is your why" question: To help myself and others thrive. Imagine a world where we all thrive Heck, imagine a school where we all thrive. How amazing would that school be? I adored this book and suspect I'll be reading more of her and her coaching books and revisiting this text often as a way to self-monitor.

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What a powerful conclusion! Throughout this whole course and Aguilar's book I continually found myself returning to the concept of, survive or thrive, what will I choose? "Resilience is the key to our ability to thrive and therefore, our ability to help others thrive." (pg.311) Aguilar confirms my answer I will choose to THRIVE! Although the journey may be challenging and you may run into changes, it is all up to you. What attitude you choose to have and how you choose to react. Remember that emotions come and go and how you recognize and respond to those emotions is what will build your resilience. I have gained a lot from this course and Aguilar's book, but I feel the most important thing I am coming away with is having a better understanding of who I am and really knowing myself. That's where it all begins, knowing yourself. My journey is not over, I have a long way to go, however, I have discovered some things about myself over the last 8 weeks that I didn't know about before. Now I can begin to recognize my emotions, tell my empowering stories, take care of myself, focus on my bright spots, be my own learner, take time for myself to have fun and play, and celebrate my successes. Once I can do all those things and many more for myself I can then begin to help others do it also. "My resilience allows me to uncover my potential, my unique skills and abilities and to contribute those to the world. In doing so I thrive." (pg. 313) I will continue to cultivate my resilience!

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I mostly appreciated learning that when you cultivate resilience it would give you joy and strength as you would be using your freedom  to support others , you would create a healthy environment to continue to grow. However, you would have to start with your self in terms of exploring your emotions and learn how direct them towards positivism , as Elena referred " Let me remind you that as you cultivate your individual resilience, you 'll have more physical, emotional, cognitive , and spiritual energy to challenge to injustices and inequalities".( pg.313) .
was also so touched when Ellena stated " the personal is political ; to cultivate resilience is to take political action." (pg.314). I believe it is essential to realize that it is OK to acknowledge our emotions and to celebrate it, in order to be able to consider other's emotions, there is nothing to be ashamed of , and the more we explore our emotions the more we would be able to control it and use is in a productive way. It is our right as humans.

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The first thing that came to mind when I began reading this chapter was the study conducted a few decades ago which found that educational administrators were the most "status quo" "risk-averse" group of administrators of all those compared in the study, despite their (our) tendency to jump on band wagons which tend to go nowhere. I also remember Bill Gates' admonition -- after spending millions of dollars trying in "invent" a new type of educational leader -- that educational leaders acted so differently from business leaders that he would no longer invest the same kind of money in the hope they might become positive agents of change. All this is interesting, but the strategies Aguilar proposes for dealing with matters which challenge us within our domain of control (Sphere of Influence) is also a world view I have adopted from early in my educational career when I first began to read the work of Vygotsky. Vygotsky developed the concept of the "zone of proximal learning" where we begin to learn most once our equilibrium is upset to a certain degree. This jives with the Chinese notion of change which combines the concept of danger with the concept of opportunity. I have learned many of the hard lessons she shares about administrators who totally miscalculate the response of their teachers: fear not opportunity. Deal with fear is good advice, and it begins with understanding in advance that change is upsetting to most. Anticipate the backfire effect, don't think it won't happen: if it does, fall back on patience, persistence and persuasion rather than power and control. Finally, I really like her strategies for dealing with chaos: slow down, analyze, focus energy, and be open to outcomes. Two weeks ago I was extremely frustrated with our tribal leadership and the slow rate at which our new charter school initiative was moving. I was knocking heads with those who hold the power, and I was having none of it. After accepting one member's perception that this may be time for me to step down (not back), my supervisor came to my house and spent a couple of hours telling me to stop for a moment -- a two week hiatus -- and let her control the politics while I got back to chasing the dream. It worked for me and the board. We are now in a "Let's fix it!" mode which is much more positive and constructive, and we actually have spent time admitting mistakes and seeking positive solutions.

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Focusing on Bright Spots is a powerful chapter. The neuroscience of threat and negative perceptions is totally new to me, especially with the 1 second to sense danger vs. 12 seconds to sense positive experiences. It explains a lot. In practice, much like Aguilar suggests, we do use morning circles, meal circles, and evening circles. The theme of the evening circles is peacekeeping and it is facilitated by an elder who understands this dynamic for keeping peace in the village. The "secret admirer" exercise is quite a bit like these peacekeeping exercises we practice -- but as it has evolved in a native society where danger was real and trauma of survival in battle or in winter made this community leary of "the bright side." An interesting thing to note is something we call Indian humor, where this trait has played a powerful role in developing resilience to a history of oppression and aggression not commonly shared across the majority white population of this society. Finally, her dive into her struggle with sadness is also very interesting and very revealing, especially as it pertains to her husband's advice to "sit down, feel the emotions, and let them course through your body." Increasingly, our European culture is breaking away from the Puritanical sense that we should always suppress our emotionality. This is good.

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As I eluded to in my chapter 7 write up, it has been an incredibly ugly week in my school district where change has caused absolutely terrible dissension. I teach in a district where an elementary school is in great turmoil, you likely read about it in the newspaper today. A new principal has been making change, change the district desired. She's an amazing principal, an award winner in fact. But several teachers and parents are pushing back against the change in a way I have never seen. I don't really know how this group moves forward from here. There are many aspects to this story, but at the heart of it is change and many, many people greatly struggling with it. The school as a collaborative learning community, desperately needs the positive AI approach from chapter 7. More than that though they need to follow the 4 principles of change, especially number 4: be open to outcomes.   A lot of heels have been dug into the ground and it's an absolute mess. My principal and I have been discussing change and how to implement it much of the year (it's her 2nd year in the building, my 1st) but this week it's been our dominant discussion. This ugly example has us re-examining how we use influence as leaders, the ways we develop collaboration, and whether or not we truly are willing to accept different outcomes than the change we hope to see. Also, are we focusing on things outside of our sphere of influence? Are we getting bogged down in things that are beyond our influence? It also ties directly into the fear discussion in the chapter. Without question what is happening at this other school has created some sense of fear for us. We don't want a mess like that. Who would? We're trying to find that balance between making wise collaborative change and being fearful of making change because maybe others in our school will react as stridently as those at the other school did. I remember a professor I had who constantly talked about this subject. He was adamant that we cannot let fear of the "what-ifs" control our decision making. I agree, but we also must identify real factors and wisely plan for them. At this other school, teachers are afraid. To them, there world was turned upside down in a very personal way and they don't know how to navigate the new reality. Simply put, they are operating from fear of the unknown. I think change is best made when collective values are established. I think in this case, they don't have those established, so the change feels deeply personal, troubling, and offensive . I cannot say enough how incredibly timely and helpful these 2 chapters have been for me this week.  It's amazing. I am incredibly curious to see how this situation resolves.

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The startling stat was that it takes at least 2 seconds for a positive experience to be absorbed and just a tenth of s second to store negative stimuli. Wow, that is scary. This just reinforces how incredibly important it is to intentionally choose a positive perspective. To know that we naturally lean toward danger or negativity is powerful information. For me, it helps build my empathy for a person when they are taking a negative perspective, which makes me want to work harder to help that person see the positive. It makes me think of data collection when I observe a teacher. I was trained to present data that says 202/28 students were engaged during the turn and talk versus 6 students were not engaged during the turn and talks. The section on strength based approach also resonated because I have learned that it is the backbone of effective CRT. Build their efficacy through their strengths which encourages them to push to build more strengths. Good energy begets a desire to grow. I think the appreciative inquiry was also helpful to me. Having a system for approaching change is very helpful, especially one that asks positive questions. I will talk more about change in my chapter 11 write-up but wow, these 2 chapters are really hitting home this week.  It's been the perfect week to read them.

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Reading and reflecting on the information in this chapter is exactly what I need right now. I'm facing an unwanted change in my work. I find it interesting that the Chinese word for change is made up of the symbol for danger and the symbol for opportunity. People who are resilient accept that all they can control is their response to things that happen. I can choose to view this unwanted change in my work as danger, which I have been up to this point, or I can view it as an opportunity. I'm realizing that my complaints about this change in my work need to be classified into the spheres of control and influence: what I can control, what I can influence, and what is outside my control and influence. I need to ask myself the essential question: Where do I want to put my energy? As I have taken a step back to think clearly and assess my current situation, I have started to think about what is possible. Prior to taking a step back, all I could think about was how I was going to try to survive under this unwanted change. When Aguilar is feeling like a victim of change, which I can relate to, she imagines looking through three lenses to gain perspective: macro lens, long lens, and a wide lens. Switching lenses can help me gain insight into how I can better respond to my situation. Aguilar states, "The secret to change is to deal with emotions (our own and those of others) and especially to deal with fear, because what many of us have tried in an effort to produce quick results has not worked" (p. 280). I realize that I have to deal with my fear about this change and cultivate patience. This patience will help me let go of the stories I hold about those involved in this change and open my eyes to the possibilities it can bring.

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The activity Aguilar describes at the beginning of this chapter ("Secret Admirers") is similar to an activity the guidance counselor at my school has been engaging my students in. There was quite a bit of tattling happening when my students came inside from recess. To get them to focus on the positive (or bright spots) instead of the negative, she showed them Boundin' from Pixar's short film collection. After watching the film and having a discussion about how the jackalope was a good friend by helping the sheep see the bright side of his situation, the students were invited to look for positive actions around them. At the end of each weekly guidance lesson, she encouraged the students to share the jackalopes they noticed during the week. Since beginning this activity, we have noticed a decrease in tattling. Focusing on the positive works when you're trying to change or you want others to change. By working from a strengths-based approach, we build confidence in ourselves and hold onto positive feelings, which we can direct towards areas where we're struggling. What we focus on grows. "It's about expanding our perspective and beginning an exploration of areas of growth from a place of power," Aguilar wrote (p. 181). To direct our minds and emotions to focus on the bright spots, we have to set intentions, take an inquiry stance, engage in appreciative inquiry, deal with emotions, and practice reflection. It's important to remember that the source of resilience is always inside each of us. We can't rely on other people to provide resilience for us. Cultivating self-efficacy and empowerment will help us manage the many challenges we face as educators.

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Change is going to happen in life whether we like it or not. How you deal with, manage and act on the change is what matters most. My biggest take away for this chapter was how Aguilar stated, "resilience comes from how you perceive and adapt to change and thinking of change as holding potential for both danger and opportunity is crucial." (pg. 269) Change does equal danger and opportunity. It's all about what you know about yourself and what you believe that will influence how you will react to the change. I also enjoyed reading about the 4 ways to deal with unwanted change. Slow down, evaluate and analyze, use energy where it counts and be open to outcomes. Over the last few years I have had a revolving door of Kindergarten teachers. Having a new teaching partner every year is hard, however, I have been using these 4 strategies without even knowing it. Most importantly I have been open to different outcomes and this has helped me move forward to where I am today. Change will happen, but instead of letting it get you down, use it as a learning experience. Learn more about yourself and continue to build resilience. As Aguilar stated, "if you want people to change, you're asking them to grow. If you're asking them for growth, you're asking them to learn." (pg. 280) This chapter really made me think about all the changes I have been through. It made me realize that I am a much stronger person than I ever thought. I was able to thrive through my toughest changes, not just survive them. What a great accomplishment!

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 2 years ago , I used to work for a big school district , I  used to teach middle and high school grade levels. At the mean time, I am working for a smaller school district , and I am teaching elementary grade level. I have made a huge change . It was very challenging , very emotional and overwhelming, as Elena stated" Change is one thing we can count on, and when we we encounter it, we can harness our physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual energies, and direct them where they will make the biggest difference." (pg.267). In fact, I have accepted a position for next school year at a different school district , and I am actually moving to live close to my new job. I am aware that that is a lot of risky change that I feel uncomfortable about, But I keep reassuring my self that it might turn out to be a better opportunity for my future , these thoughts make me feel that I will try hard to adjust to the change , I keep telling my self,  it is a matter of having perseverance, and resistance. When I read this chapter , I realized that I have developed  resilience towards change , as Elena explained "  Resilience comes from how you perceive and adapt to change - and thinking of change as holding the potential for both danger and opportunity is crucial" (pg.269). My biggest take away from this chapter is " learning how to " not be acting out of ego" (pg.277). It is all about you prepare your self to the out come of the change you made regardless it is what you desire or not , as Elena explained " being open to out come allows us to be flexible and adaptable " (pg.277).

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 2 years ago , I used to work for a big school district , I  used to teach middle and high school grade levels. At the mean time, I am working for a smaller school district , and I am teaching elementary grade level. I have made a huge change . It was very challenging , very emotional and overwhelming, as Elena stated" Change is one thing we can count on, and when we we encounter it, we can harness our physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual energies, and direct them where they will make the biggest difference." (pg.267). In fact, I have accepted a position for next school year at a different school district , and I am actually moving to live close to my new job. I am aware that that is a lot of risky change that I feel uncomfortable about, But I keep reassuring my self that it might turn out to be a better opportunity for my future , these thoughts make me feel that I will try hard to adjust to the change , I keep telling my self,  it is a matter of having perseverance, and resistance. When I read this chapter , I realized that I have developed  resilience towards change , as Elena explained "  Resilience comes from how you perceive and adapt to change - and thinking of change as holding the potential for both danger and opportunity is crucial" (pg.269). My biggest take away from this chapter is " learning how to " not be acting out of ego" (pg.277). It is all about you prepare your self to the out come of the change you made regardless it is what you desire or not , as Elena explained " being open to out come allows us to be flexible and adaptable " (pg.277).

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The district I currently work in uses PBIS (Positive Behavior Intervention Systems) as our behavior plan. While reading this chapter I found myself thinking about our PBIS approach and that our goal is to focus on the good, find those "bright spots" as Aguilar call them. I was particularly interested in the activity she described as the "secret admirer" where students offer and receive appreciations. While this might be difficult at first for my young learners I think overtime they would begin to understand and embrace it. This activity would also be great for staff. Sometimes we get all caught up in the negative things that we need a little guidance to focus more on the good that is happening around us. I also loved the coaching strategy Aguilar used with Misha. Observing for 10 minutes everyday and sharing only the things that were going well. This would be powerful to do with your mentee, as well as, other colleagues. Focusing on what's going well can lead to discussions about how to improve the things that aren't, thus improving instruction and student achievement. Finally, I found it very interesting that your mind can store negative stimuli within a tenth of a second, but it takes 12 seconds to retain positive experiences. What!? That's amazing! No wonder why we need to train our brain and lead our mind and emotions to focus on the good and those bright spots. The five ways to do this, setting intentions, taking an inquiry stance, engaging in appreciative inquiry, dealing with emotions and practicing reflections as Aguilar states are great reminders of how to use those 12 seconds so those bright spots are turned into memories. To get to those bright spots these is bound to be a challenge along the way. Respond to the challenges, manage them and believe in yourself. "The source of your resilience is always inside you." (pg. 193)

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Reading this chapter remind of my previous instruction leader who had the greatest impact on me as a teacher, He is the  one who taught me to catch the students being positive, as Elena referred " Finding one good thing about someone broadens our view of that person" (pg.181) . It is all about having this mind shift of replacing the negative language with a positive one . " it's about expanding your perspective and being an exploration of areas of growth from a place of power ". Elena pointed out ,(pg. 181)   As mentors , we need  acknowledge and appreciated our mentees in so many different ways , in order to be able to connect with them , as a result , we would be able to empower them and help them to gain more skills and to continue to grow. My biggest take away from this  chapter is the fact that being reflective is very fundamental aspect of being successful , and an essential resource that can help you to continue the productive  practice that you have dreamed of, as Elena stated "  it's clarifies future actions and your own behaviors, and helps with decision making" (pg.187)

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Reading this chapter remind of my previous instruction leader who had the greatest impact on me as a teacher, He is the  one who taught me to catch the students being positive, as Elena referred " Finding one good thing about someone broadens our view of that person" (pg.181) . It is all about having this mind shift of replacing the negative language with a positive one . " it's about expanding your perspective and being an exploration of areas of growth from a place of power ". Elena pointed out ,(pg. 181)   As mentors , we need  acknowledge and appreciated our mentees in so many different ways , in order to be able to connect with them , as a result , we would be able to empower them and help them to gain more skills and to continue to grow. My biggest take away from this  chapter is the fact that being reflective is very fundamental aspect of being successful , and an essential resource that can help you to continue the productive  practice that you have dreamed of, as Elena stated "  it's clarifies future actions and your own behaviors, and helps with decision making" (pg.187)

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People have different levels of need for being recognized and appreciated, I think. I remember often hoping I would not be the one that would have to get up in front the rest of the class to receive an award or recognition of some sort. Interestingly, during my graduate years in college we were all asked in our leadership class to take one of those personality profile assessments that ends up rating you in multiple dimensions, one of which was "Need for Recognition" (e.g. "extrinsic rewards." A young female student and I scored the lowest in that category -- we were so far below the others in the class that it was definitely a teachable moment. The two of us were asked to go in front of the class (That's right!) and explain why it was we marked the need to be recognized so far down our list of importance. She spoke first, and I immediately fell in love with her because I thought I was the only one who thought this way! Somehow, being recognized made each of us feel uncomfortable, probably for reasons buried deep within our subconscious pasts that neither of us had taken much time to deconstruct. By contrast, the two highest scorers were asked to come before the class and tell why they felt they needed such recognition and therefore placed it at the top of their lists. Their really was no neuroscientific explanation that accounted for our response vs. theirs, but it probably had a lot to do with a missing hormone, preference for maintaining an "outsider" image, or because at a very early age we were struck on the head by a personal trophy falling off the shelf and landing on our heads. Either way, the two of us bonded as students ever after -- and never took time to compliment one another.
The part about spirituality vs. religion was interesting, but also not so much a personal need I feel as much as others, perhaps. I have always abhorred the crusader mentality which drives many Christians: in fact, while at Saint Mary's, I refused to attend a presentation by Cardinal Dolan because of his complicity in protecting pedophile priests. I simply could not understand why so many of my peers and students attended. It still baffles me. I understand that is about organized religion, not spirituality, as Aguilar seeks to address the topic, and I did appreciate her willingness to address how much like an outsider she felt when Christian ceremonies assumed everyone in the room was Christian. Much like talking with my mentoring teachers about their sex lives, I also feel uncomfortable coaching mentoring teachers about their spirituality -- and certainly not their religion.

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"How you tell the story of your life matters."  That's it right there for me.  I can choose to be grateful for the challenges put before me and be appreciative for the opportunities they provide me to learn and grow.  Acknowledging that it is choice, my choice to make, to be grateful is actually very liberating.  In my work as an admin intern this year I have been learning how to budget my time.  I have been using a daily sheet called being intentional and on it is an area for being grateful.  What struck me the most was how I struggled at first to find things to be grateful for.  I was thinking they had to be these big things.  Through daily practice, as the book suggests, I have learned to be grateful for the smaller things; a conversation, a simple act, etc. I also connected with the author's discussion in the disposition section.  In reading the statements of doubt, I could see myself in them.  I just completed my administration license exit assessment this week.  It was a massive amount of work that I thought I would never be able to complete.  I had so much doubt.  But having trust in myself, in the process, in something larger really did help me through during the times I felt overwhelmed and certain that this task was beyond me.  It's true that in those challenging moments, that I build my resiliency by connecting to the larger whole through identifying that I am a part of a larger process.  It brings me comfort to trust in the process, that the struggle is a part of the learning and that I should be grateful for what the struggle is teaching me.  As a leader I want to extend this gratitude mindset to my staff so that we can celebrate each other and ourselves.  We have a right to celebrate not just our successes but also the caring efforts we made in our failures.  

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"How you tell the story of your life matters."  That's it right there for me.  I can choose to be grateful for the challenges put before me and be appreciative for the opportunities they provide me to learn and grow.  Acknowledging that it is choice, my choice to make, to be grateful is actually very liberating.  In my work as an admin intern this year I have been learning how to budget my time.  I have been using a daily sheet called being intentional and on it is an area for being grateful.  What struck me the most was how I struggled at first to find things to be grateful for.  I was thinking they had to be these big things.  Through daily practice, as the book suggests, I have learned to be grateful for the smaller things; a conversation, a simple act, etc. I also connected with the author's discussion in the disposition section.  In reading the statements of doubt, I could see myself in them.  I just completed my administration license exit assessment this week.  It was a massive amount of work that I thought I would never be able to complete.  I had so much doubt.  But having trust in myself, in the process, in something larger really did help me through during the times I felt overwhelmed and certain that this task was beyond me.  It's true that in those challenging moments, that I build my resiliency by connecting to the larger whole through identifying that I am a part of a larger process.  It brings me comfort to trust in the process, that the struggle is a part of the learning and that I should be grateful for what the struggle is teaching me.  As a leader I want to extend this gratitude mindset to my staff so that we can celebrate each other and ourselves.  We have a right to celebrate not just our successes but also the caring efforts we made in our failures.  

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While reading this chapter, I could hear my grandma saying something to me, which she said often when she was alive: "There is always something to be grateful for." I think Aguilar would agree and add that there is something to celebrate in every day. When we feel and express appreciation, our social connections are strengthened; our emotional intelligence and self-confidence is deepened; and our ability to focus on the positive increases. To make our schools more positive environments to work in, we must appreciate others and ourselves. I am going to start looking for little things people in my school community do every day that are often overlooked and acknowledge those things. I also would like to try writing down three things at the end of each week that went well and the role I played in making them happen. Aguilar said, "If someone appreciates you, he's giving you a gift. It's his choice to give you a gift, and you need to humbly receive it" (p. 298). I hadn't thought of appreciation as a gift before, but it really is. New teachers are especially in need of acknowledgement for their successes and contributions, and that's where I can play an important part in supporting my mentee. I can also support my mentee, throughout the school year, by encouraging him or her to trust him- or herself and the process, especially when faced with a difficult situation. We can reflect together on what he or she was able to do, and celebrate those moments.

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In order to reap the benefits of gratitude and appreciation you have to practice it yourself. Once again it leads back to you and what you know about yourself to give and receive gratitude to and from others. The benefits of showing gratitude and being grateful are so great why wouldn't you practice it? Your relationships improve, mental health improves and even your physical health can improve. Practicing gratitude regularly will give you the tools to be more resilient no matter what life throws your way. I recently participated in a gratitude practice similar to what Aguilar described on pg. 292. I wrote down 3 things I was grateful for or that went well each day. I tried to be very intentional and specific about the things I wrote down. The part I did not do that Aguilar suggested was to write what my role was in making these things happen. Aguilar made me realize that if I recognize my role in these daily situations that I will see my own growth and push myself to be a better person and learn more about myself. Practicing gratitude is just like practicing anything else. The more you do it the more you train your brain to be aware of the positives in your life. This brain training can help you make better decisions, be more confident, push yourself to be your best self and make you happier. Gratitude and appreciation are a process, much like a lot of things in life, but it you start using gratitude in small ways it can lead to great things. After reading this chapter I came across the video below: An Experiment in Gratitude. I encourage you to check it out and try it for yourself.

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An Experiment in Gratitude | The Science of Happiness

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  In my previous school , we used to come to the weekly professional development ready to share who we appreciate this week , and share the reasons why we appreciated this person, I remembered how that made me feel great , and also motivated me to perform better , to offer more , as Elena Aguilar stated "Appreciation Cultivates our trust in ourselves, in a process, and perhaps in something  greater, which helps us respond to the inevitable challenges of life" (pg.289) . No doubt , that when you feel appreciated , you feel that you can over come  the difficult moments that you encounter everyday. I also tend to feel a lot of joy remember the people I am grateful for ,and talk about , an repeat what they have done to me . realizing all these  great feelings and the great impact the gratitude feeling has on me , I started to have what I call gratitude journal , first I tried to reflect on my week , and think about all the blessings I have, and all the people, the experiences that I am grateful for, then eventually it became a bed time daily activity that I had to do as Elena referred " Expressing gratitude is a mental habit we can develop- we just need practice" (pg.293). In reality, everyone wanted to be noticed,  in order to continue achieving the required goals , when administration fail  to do that , a lot of teachers start to quit their jobs. we also need to take credit for what we do. Thinking about the school district I work for recently, I can see that we only get appreciated once a year in the beginning of each school year, and it is not even all of us , it is whoever was nominated. I think that should become a routine that happens more than once. As future leaders , we have to be intentional about appreciating others , and may be start sharing what do we appreciate in ourselves this week, and then pick another person to show gratitude to. Not only  that would make you feel happy, but also would help you to gain insights, and to keep improving . I felt so satisfied reading  Ellison and Levin, 1998) quote ,as it stated  that "Research on the well-being of religious people finds that they are happier and healthier". I believe that having faith is the most important aspect of this life. Faith in God, in Humanity , and good deeds would always be a cure to our pains . 

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  In my previous school , we used to come to the weekly professional development ready to share who we appreciate this week , and share the reasons why we appreciated this person, I remembered how that made me feel great , and also motivated me to perform better , to offer more , as Elena Aguilar stated "Appreciation Cultivates our trust in ourselves, in a process, and perhaps in something  greater, which helps us respond to the inevitable challenges of life" (pg.289) . No doubt , that when you feel appreciated , you feel that you can over come  the difficult moments that you encounter everyday. I also tend to feel a lot of joy remember the people I am grateful for ,and talk about , an repeat what they have done to me . realizing all these  great feelings and the great impact the gratitude feeling has on me , I started to have what I call gratitude journal , first I tried to reflect on my week , and think about all the blessings I have, and all the people, the experiences that I am grateful for, then eventually it became a bed time daily activity that I had to do as Elena referred " Expressing gratitude is a mental habit we can develop- we just need practice" (pg.293). In reality, everyone wanted to be noticed,  in order to continue achieving the required goals , when administration fail  to do that , a lot of teachers start to quit their jobs. we also need to take credit for what we do. Thinking about the school district I work for recently, I can see that we only get appreciated once a year in the beginning of each school year, and it is not even all of us , it is whoever was nominated. I think that should become a routine that happens more than once. As future leaders , we have to be intentional about appreciating others , and may be start sharing what do we appreciate in ourselves this week, and then pick another person to show gratitude to. Not only  that would make you feel happy, but also would help you to gain insights, and to keep improving . I felt so satisfied reading  Ellison and Levin, 1998) quote ,as it stated  that "Research on the well-being of religious people finds that they are happier and healthier". I believe that having faith is the most important aspect of this life. Faith in God, in Humanity , and good deeds would always be a cure to our pains . 

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The information in this chapter is exactly what I needed to hear because I have a lot of improvement to make in self-care, and I am a perfectionist. On the first page of the chapter, Aguilar included a section of a letter she wrote to herself during her third year of teaching. In that section she wrote, "You will not save the world by working yourself to the bone" (p. 147). I feel like I'm working myself to the bone. I got a gym membership about three months ago and haven't used it once. I arrive to school early and stay late. Our bodies and emotions are intertwined. They affect each other. Aguilar suggests four reasons why we don't take care of ourselves: knowledge gap, skill gaps, will gap, and intelligence gap. The good news is that there are strategies we can use to improve our self-care. One of the strategies I would like to try is to write a self-care plan, which includes SMART self-care goals. Another strategy I would like to use is seeking out teachers who live balanced lives and do great work with kids, so I can learn self-care strategies from them. I am guilty of playing the martyr card, sometimes seeking appreciation for my hard work. Instead, I'll ask for feedback and stay committed to my learning. I also plan to make some behavioral changes, including setting and sticking to time limits for my tasks and using positive self-talk. The reality is that teachers can transform kids' lives and still have a life (i.e. families, hobbies, plenty of sleep, etc.). Self-care needs to be a priority.

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Taking care of myself has been a focus of mine the last 2 years, with mixed results, but certainly better results. I'm 45 years old and I spent way too many years conflicted between my obligations as a teacher and my needs as a human on this planet. I eventually have come to understand that the two are connected pieces that rely on each other for success. Sleeping more (which has helped as my kids have aged) and exercising regularly have been my two major life improvements. My diet is a work in progress, but I appreciate that I am at least "consciously incompetent", to borrow a phrase from last week.
The part of the chapter I enjoyed the most though were the sections on martyrdom and perfectionism.  I've been working with a student on our intervention team who we suspected was struggling with perfectionism and as I read the list he fit everyone of them. The list of traits gives me a better mindset on how to approach his intervention and support his learning needs. I then started thinking how this connects to our staff, some of whom are definitely both perfectionists and martyrs.  What am I doing as a building leader to not encourage this thinking? What am I doing to engender healthy living among staff? Am I a good role model for healthy balance? Do I create a climate that says, "It's okay to go home now, you've done enough."? Gmail is coming out with a new tool that lets you schedule the release of emails. I'm guilty of sending off emails in the evening and as an administrator now I need to be careful that I am not communicating that I value teachers constantly checking their emails. What unintentional burdens am I placing on them (and me)? I'm excited to try this new email feature of writing emails but not having them sent until the next morning at 8:30am, which is our teacher report time. Through this I can get work done at night as needed, without sending the message that I expect teachers to be communicating with me in the evenings. I want our staff to live balanced lives because our students deserve the best versions of ourselves every day. Creating a culture that believes that and has the skills to achieve it is incredibly challenging but somehow together, we need to achieve this.

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I have previously stated after taking the resilience  self-assessment is that taking care of my self is my weakest area, and it is an aspect that I need to work on, as I can see it affects me physically and emotionally and that's exactly what Elena Aguilar referred to " our bodies and emotions are inextricably intertwined-our physical sate creates emotional states; our emotions are affected by our physical state." (pg.148). My biggest take away from this chapter is I literary wrote a list of the things I  need to improve in order to take care of my self, such as healthy eating , exercise on daily basis, and quit making excuses, I realized that I wont be able to apply the strategies I have learned on this chapter unless I start implementing it first. I also realized that being a perfectionist , and trying so hard to fulfill everything  as the book says won't help me , in addition , I need to remind myself to stop over committing as that sometimes makes me loose control over emotions and become very fragile, as Elena pointed out " we take too much work and over commit . This is an emotional intelligence gap. Valuing yourself and feeling worth self-care are core to emotional intelligence." (pg.150)

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I have previously stated after taking the resilience  self-assessment is that taking care of my self is my weakest area, and it is an aspect that I need to work on, as I can see it affects me physically and emotionally and that's exactly what Elena Aguilar referred to " our bodies and emotions are inextricably intertwined-our physical sate creates emotional states; our emotions are affected by our physical state." (pg.148). My biggest take away from this chapter is I literary wrote a list of the things I  need to improve in order to take care of my self, such as healthy eating , exercise on daily basis, and quit making excuses, I realized that I wont be able to apply the strategies I have learned on this chapter unless I start implementing it first. I also realized that being a perfectionist , and trying so hard to fulfill everything  as the book says won't help me , in addition , I need to remind myself to stop over committing as that sometimes makes me loose control over emotions and become very fragile, as Elena pointed out " we take too much work and over commit . This is an emotional intelligence gap. Valuing yourself and feeling worth self-care are core to emotional intelligence." (pg.150)

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Caring for yourself is just as important has knowing yourself.  Actually knowing who you are and caring for yourself can be considered one in the same.  Aguilar states that, " when your body is cared for, your better able to deal with emotions."  Knowing yourself is about understanding your emotional-self, values, beliefs and how you respond to different situations.  If you are caring for yourself than knowing yourself may be much easier.
My first year of teaching my principal gave me a copy of the phases of a first year teacher.  I thought, "that won't be me."  I was wrong.  I remember during MEA break thinking how am I ever going to get through the rest of the year.  I was spending long hours at school planning and preparing what I thought were great lessons, but seeing little results from all my hard work.  On top of it all I had a my own children who were 5yrs old, 2 yrs old and 6 months old at the time and I was trying to be a good mother and wife as well.  Just as the phases stated it did get better.  I started to see my students doing the things I had taught them and the uphill journey began.  By the end of the year I was excited I had accomplished so many things.  I was looking forward to start again the following year with new ideas and knowing there is hope.
Finally, this chapter reminded me how important sleep, exercise and nutrition are to our minds. I already knew this, but sometimes it takes a little reminder to get back on track. For me, sleep is the one thing I need more of. Teaching 5 and 6 yr olds all day and then coming home to my own (which are 10, 7 and 5 yrs old now) is exhausting. I like how Aguilar said that even going to bed 30 minutes earlier can make a difference. This will be a challenge for me, but it is something I have to do. I also need to remember to take time for myself each day, even if it is only for 15 minutes. Caring for yourself helps in knowing who are. Take the time to do so.

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This week was spring break for our school. I spent about four days of it babysitting my one-year-old niece. During our time together I got to explore play and creativity. I found that I was not stressed, having fun, and enjoying life. My goal is to incorporate play into my life every week...not just regulate it to breaks in the school year. Aguilar explained some of the benefits of play, including relieving stress, improving relationships, and keeping one feeling young and energetic. Playing with my niece did all of this and more for me. Aguilar wrote, "In order to embrace play, it helps to have an appreciation for art and the time to explore it" (p. 255). During my life, I have not had much of an appreciation for art. I've always felt like I wasn't good at it. After reading this chapter, my appreciation for art grew. It's an avenue for connection and empathy. I experienced connection and empathy last month when I watched a production of "The Diary of Anne Frank" at my local theater. I didn't realize that appreciating art builds resilience, but to maximize its potential I have to create it.

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Sexual honesty is hard to process in a teacher training manual. This was a very interesting section in this chapter, to say the least, but it kept me focused! The entire healthy living approach is an easier sell now than it was before the fitness craze, but all of the pluses Aguilar discusses are very true and very oxygen-related: mind, body, and soul. I especially liked the graph tracking the phases of first-year teachers attitudes (Moir, 1990). Even though my initiation was more than five decades ago, I still remember this cycle and hitting bottom in the disillusionment phase, though mine happened late-winter and was driven by a crazed department chair who felt men shouldn't wear dashikis. Luckily, I benefited from a strong mentor who shared my same sense of humor about life in general and English department chairs in particular! I think teacher trainees also benefit from understanding cycles of the moon and their own biorhythms. Call it full moon syndrome, but man all hell breaks loose in very predictable cycles. The section on sleep was often very interesting. I learned early in life how to follow the early western approach to sleep when cowboys and cowgirls would sleep hard and fast for a few hours, then get up in the middle of the night to play cards and go about their business, then drop off back to sleep until the waking hours in early morning. Because I was raised on a cranberry farm where we had to get up regularly in the middle of the night to check sprinklers protecting against the frost, I got into the habit of going into a deep sleep almost immediately after my head hit the pillow, coming to a full wake around 1:00 a.m. as soon as my head got off the pillow, getting dressed and driving into the mid-night darkness to hop in and out of my warm pickup into the cold damp air for the next three or four hours, then crawling back into bed around 4:00 a.m. and sleeping hard for two hours before going to work. I have never used an alarm clock as a result, but I always wake up rested and ready to go. This time in the middle of the night is when I would correct papers and respond to student journals once I became an English teacher, and it is now the time I use to write grants in the quiet time when nearly everything else sleeps. It's magical, in a way. In native culture much is said about day journeys and night journeys, when day journeys are the time for learning life's lessons and night journeys are time for visioning and communing with the spirit world. I have made a conscious effort to take such journeys and to seek the advice of elders in trying to interpret them. It continues to amaze me how this process helps me conceptualize things I never thought about before, how to "dream things that never were and say, why not?"

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Challenges are opportunities for learning. If we are curious during these challenges, we're more apt to find solutions. Aguilar presented two useful frameworks to understand learning development: The Conscious (awareness) Competence (skill level) Ladder and Mind the Gap. The Conscious Competence Ladder is a framework that helps us understand the four stages of learning: unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence, and unconscious competence. I went through these stages while I was enrolled in the M.A. in Literacy Education (K-12 Reading) program. I had just graduated from the B.A. in Elementary Education program, and I did not appreciate how much I needed to learn about literacy development. I was not prepared for the emotions I would feel during the process. Mind the Gap is a framework to help us understand which of six areas are interfering with our ability to do something: emotional intelligence, cultural competence, will, capacity, knowledge, and skill. This framework can help us find our true potential and what lies in the way of fulfilling it. It's important to attend to the foundational competencies (emotional intelligence and cultural competence) in order to make more growth quickly in developing the higher gaps (knowledge and skill). While reading this chapter, I discovered several helpful tips for managing my time and energy, so I can devote more time and energy to being a learner. My weekends are often spent grading, writing lesson plans, preparing materials for lessons, etc., so my weekends are not usually fun and relaxing. One of the strategies Aguilar suggested, which I would like to work on, is to stop multitasking. I tend to shift my attention from one task to another rather than focusing on completing my primary task. I also want to work on increasing my level of curiosity by looking for learning opportunities within challenges. I can do this by asking myself What can I learn from this challenge? Then, I'll be open to ideas and look for solutions to those challenges.

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Mindfulness is a relatively new concept to me beginning this school year.  I had heard of it, but didn't give it much regard. However, we have had instructors from a mindfulness organization at our school every Monday since January working with classes and it's been just fantastic.  I have come to value it greatly, both professionally and personally. The opening sentence to the chapter describes something that I rarely ever do: be present in the moment, and here's the tough part, without judging it. As a musician and teacher, I've spent most of life learning how to quickly judge what I am seeing and hearing. It's considered a strong trait. Reading the first sentence was jarring. It initially just sounded so paradoxical, almost absurd to me.  Be present in the moment without judging it? How often do I do that in a day? Not often sadly. The part about the pause was useful to me. In particular, keeping my finger on the pause button as long as I need until I'm aligned back with my core values, was a great mental visual for me. I recently presented an hour PD session on implicit bias to my staff. I greatly appreciated how the author connected mindfulness as a tool for tearing down our own implicit bias and improving our cultural competence. In a time where everyone is looking for ways to remove the tremendous achievement gaps (our school has a huge one), it's exciting to pick up a new and practical tool to combat it, that as she states, is absolutely free. This chapter affirmed a suspicion that I have been having more and more this school year, that mindfulness has a big role to play in education and I need to be a part of it.

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This one hit home. I copied the conscious competence ladder page and gave it to my wife, who is also a teacher. She teaches orchestra and just got a student teacher. The student teacher just completed her first week and last Friday was her first time teaching music lessons (about 4 kids in a group). It was extremely rough. After the first group she asked my wife to takeover because, as she said through tears, "I know I'm a terrible teacher." My wife and I discussed strategies to help her. My biggest point was to affirm her because she's aware that she has deficits. More than that, it bothers her. That's great! Imagine if she was bad and didn't know it? Worse, imagine if she knew she was bad and didn't even care? Her awareness and her tears are where her power comes from. She's clearly on the 2nd rung of the conscious competence ladder. She took a big step last week from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence. That's good growth for one week! Now my wife will slowly help her develop her skills and move her way little by little up the ladder. Each small success will build her efficacy and hopefully fuel her passion to learn and grow more. I think all teachers need to know about this ladder concept. It so aptly describes the honest journey the majority of teachers take on their careers.

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I connected strongly with this chapter. As a musician and former music teacher for 15 years, I highly value play, creativity, and the art that results from it. I believe firmly that in general, as school systems, we have lost our way on how to cultivate creativity through play. Creativity is actually our current school theme that we are working on. Aside from all of the wonderful emotional benefits of creativity, it also is a key element to not just problem solving, but more importantly, problem finding, as George Couros calls it. Through creativity, we discover problems and develop innovative solutions to them, which, when you think about it, is really at the heart of our educational purpose. As Aguilar states, creativity and curiosity are intertwined. I believe they spur each other onward. Let me also say, that yes!, please reclaim your artistic expression. We all have it in us. It's not a gift. It's a developed skill we all can nurture in ourselves for our own personal betterment. I conduct a community band and every Tuesday night people of all ages and professions rehearse until 9:30pm for the only purpose of enjoyment and artistic expression (one guy is 91 years old and composed and published his first band piece at the age of 89). It's their own slice of resilience building. It's a glorious experience to actually create art. Get your hands dirty, play out of tune, make a mess, and have fun because it's fun to have fun.

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Play is an important part of a child's life as it allows them to use their imagination and be creative. Why not make play a part of your adult life as well. As I read this chapter it made me think of some of the concepts in chapter 9 about being a learner. Play provides so many opportunities to learn something. Aguilar refers to Stuart Browns book and states that his core message is, "just a little bit of non-productive play will make us more productive, invigorated and resilient." Play can clear our minds, relieve our stress, improve brain function, boost creativity and help build strong relationships which in turn helps us to be better learners. Play is not just essential for kids, adults need it too, as a source of relaxation and stimulation. It fuels our imagination, creativity, problem-solving and our emotional well-being. As I read about the importance of the arts and creativity it lead me right back to play. It is through play that we discover our artistic expressions and dive into our creative abilities. After reading this chapter I made a list of the activities that I find most enjoyable and playful. I can't wait to engage myself in them and enjoy a bit of play, art and creativity for myself. I deserve it!

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This was a fun chapter, because the realm of creative expression as an extension of playfulness makes a lot of sense to me. I find the visioning process which precedes most human endeavor to be exceptionally rewarding as a type of play. Game theory pushes this same notion: we learn because there is something about play that is intrinsic to how we think and how we live. My response to the cavemen’s paintings is, “What else are you going to do hunkered down in a cave for most of the day and night?” Well, eventually language came along, but first there was the art of the image, the core of imagination.

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I enjoyed this chapter. Inquiry-based teaching has always been my instructional approach, and I have experienced the same type of gains in reading and math scores Aguilar experienced with students who were often labeled as “at-risk,” worse yet, “slow learners.” Tapping into the natural curiosity of every child is not as hard as it seems – if we listen as teachers, engage in the conversation, and don’t let our over-anxious agendas of “this must be mastered by then” overwhelm us. I also enjoyed her pyramid and notion that we get hung up in the top two tiers of skills gaps and knowledge gaps in education and need to focus more on the lower tiers, beginning with emotional intelligence and even cultural awareness gaps. The will gap is were I have always enjoyed meeting students: getting students passionate about learning – rather, tapping into their natural passions and curiosities – makes classrooms flow and students fully-engaged. Her time management section was particularly interesting, since my schedule still flows much differently than hers. I have always worked in the middle of the night, from about 1:00 a.m. to about 4:30 a.m. During these magic hours, the house is quiet and my mind fully engaged. I used to correct 120-150 essays a week during this time period, and nowadays this is when I do the bulk of my grant writing. If I can get even an hour’s sleep before officially waking up and going to work, I feel fully refreshed and not pressured to get things done. It’s nice and very productive in my experience.

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Brace yourself: this is long. Each of the main topics of this chapter was interesting to me, because I continue to marvel at the differences between the way I experience life and those examples Aguilar draws from her own. I know many people who have meditated consciously and in elevated levels of consciousness throughout their lives. My wife is one of those, but I am not. I keep going back to differing levels of intensity people experience: I was born mellow and have always been, with my pulse rate generally in the high 40’s or low 50’s. I have observed some people going bananas when I could not decipher why, what were their triggers and why did I not feel them? Without meditation, I generally think like a pragmatist, ever mindful of the present, drawing on experiences from my past which apply to situations before me and casting forward into what possibly can be borne in the future if we develop achievable ends in view with a pathway to get there? Though my mind travels seamlessly from present to past to future, it is mostly in the mindful present as Aguilar describes it. So, there is such a thing as a calm, mindful existence without the experience of meditation I feel in my own case. I thought her discussion of blind prejudices was exceptionally good, for I have learned similar things about my own biases as I have helped raise my African American grandchildren and now my first great grandchild. I am coming to understand how they were first taught how to experience the world so differently by a stepdad who came into their lives with his own deep thoughts and convictions with total commitment to helping them grow to be mindful of the world and their unique perspective on it. I have seen first hand how others respond, how some of other races treat them the same or much differently than children of their own race, and how these kids have learned to process this difference so it doesn’t hurt them or diminish their sense of whom they are – all under the careful coaching of their stepdad. Finally, Aguilar’s discussion of humor was spot-on, and I too have enjoyed the thoughts of the Dalai Lama, Tutu, and Abrams. The other day a young teacher who has just relocated to the rez and has dealt with anxiety issues all her life had the fifth in a series of meetings with me to discuss this project we are working on together to help develop Professional Development Plans for teachers seeking licensure. Surviving a cold and snowy winter as the head of household, navigating incredible flu epidemics as home and in school, and trying to keep her head above water financially and emotionally, she was sitting next to me in the rotunda at the center of our elementary school and was engaged in this intense emotionally charged discussion of what we are doing and what comes next when she all at once burst into outrageous laughter. It rang throughout the entire building and, like most schools, people wondered what was up. Somehow, a Bounce pad had worked its way up my jacket sleeve and was surfacing at my wrist. As she saw it and processed exactly what was up, she screamed out at the sheer joy of the moment. Our relationship is now totally different and we collaborate on an entirely different wavelength.

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This chapter made me think of the saying, "I learned something new today."  Everyday is a chance to learn something new.  It might be something small or perhaps it is something that your curious about and takes years to fully understand it.  Know matter how small or big learning "is a path to growth and resilience." (pg. 221)  As I answered the reflection questions at the end of the chapter I felt good about myself as a learner.  I was able to connect to the conscious competence ladder and identify an area of learning on each rung that I need to focus on.  I felt joy when reading about the time management pieces of this chapter because this is one area I feel confident about and pride myself in.  I was saddened when I read about learning organizations and determined my district is weak in this and has much work to do to make it stronger.  Finally, I became curious about this "Mind the Gap" concept and want to learn more about it.  Nobody is perfect and we all have gaps.  Those "gaps are indicators that we can still learn and grow." (pg. 233)  By figuring out where your gaps are and understanding them you can find ways to make those gaps smaller or perhaps close them even.
Learning is a daily event, allow yourself to learn something new everyday!

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Focus on the task at hand.  I have to tell myself this frequently.  I am that person who is constantly thinking of all the things I have already done, to be sure I did them right or to analyze what I could have done differently, and all the things I still have to do.  I have had moments where I have had so much going on in my mind that I didn't know where to begin.  This chapter gave me hope.  Through meditation I can become more mindful and hit that internal pause button of drama that is happening in my life.  I will be honest, I stopped reading during the portion on meditation in this chapter and tried it.  It was hard!  However, if meditation will help me to be more mindful I am willing to try it.
Finding joy and humor in each day was another take-away for me in this chapter.  This is something I try to do each day.  I can relate to the spilt paint, someone having an accident,  a student crying because they lost their pencil and the principal walking into the classroom all at the same time.  Find the joy in that situation means laughing at it and telling your principal that everything is going great.  I experience many of these moments throughout the school year as a kindergarten teacher and if I didn't laugh about them I don't know that I would make it.  Just as Aguilar states, "humor helps you to be here now, laughter is grounding!"
Pay attention to what is going on right now, take a moment to process it and then consciously act on it.  I love the last sentence of the chapter, "mindfulness helps you strengthen deep resilience muscles that you never knew you had."

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Starting reading about the benefits of play, I remembered my previous school district instruction leader, and how he used to start each and every professional development day with a game or community building activity , or even a sentence starter, so I was able to have many connections, and I was able to reflect on how these activities make me less stressed , and more focused even on the if we just have burned out from a lunch fight, or physical fight between the students. In addition, I realized the urgency of keeping this habit of insisting on having fun in the beginning of each intense meeting as Stuart Brown state that" just a little bit of "non productive play " will make us more productive, invigorated, and resilient."(p 250). i strongly agree with Elena Aguilar's quote " Creativity and its cousins-imagination and innovation-are the missing ingredients in many school reform efforts, School transformation almost always relies on deeply creative thinking." (p 259). On the other hand , I believe that Creativity is hard to cultivate sometimes as it is based on developing the inquirer inside you. As you always worry about how others would perceive your creativity, or if it is going to make sense to others , However Elena has solved the problem when she stated " you must rein in your perfectionist tendencies, your insecurities about what others will think, and you fear failure ." (p 261).  

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Starting reading about the benefits of play, I remembered my previous school district instruction leader, and how he used to start each and every professional development day with a game or community building activity , or even a sentence starter, so I was able to have many connections, and I was able to reflect on how these activities make me less stressed , and more focused even on the if we just have burned out from a lunch fight, or physical fight between the students. In addition, I realized the urgency of keeping this habit of insisting on having fun in the beginning of each intense meeting as Stuart Brown state that" just a little bit of "non productive play " will make us more productive, invigorated, and resilient."(p 250). i strongly agree with Elena Aguilar's quote " Creativity and its cousins-imagination and innovation-are the missing ingredients in many school reform efforts, School transformation almost always relies on deeply creative thinking." (p 259). On the other hand , I believe that Creativity is hard to cultivate sometimes as it is based on developing the inquirer inside you. As you always worry about how others would perceive your creativity, or if it is going to make sense to others , However Elena has solved the problem when she stated " you must rein in your perfectionist tendencies, your insecurities about what others will think, and you fear failure ." (p 261).  

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I often feel like I'm lost in the present at work because I'm going a hundred miles a minute, and I feel stressed. I'm not clearheaded in my responses. In this chapter, Aguilar writes that "learning to be in the present moment, without judging it, boosts our resilience" (p. 125). Mindfulness is a non-judgmental, focused mental state. It is cultivated through meditation. In meditation, you sit down, close your  eyes, and focus on your breath in order to cultivate awareness of what your mind is doing. You can find moments in your day to practice mindfulness. Aguilar found her yard duty as an opportunity to practice mindfulness. I plan to do the same. Meditation positively impacts your brain, body, and classroom. Mindfulness and additional learning can be valuable tools in understanding your own unconscious biases, recognizing your distorted ways of thinking, and eradicating those biases. If I use these tools, I will be on a path to thriving, not surviving. In a place of thriving is joy. Experiencing joy will help me fulfill my purpose at work. Looking for the humor in situations will make everything easier. Being more fully present will relieve the stress I feel because I'll be able to look for the humor in a situation.

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As Educators, our goal for our students is to be lifelong learners , and in order for that to be fulfilled , we have to be lifelong learners as well. As Elena pointed out " with a deeper understanding of your learning development, you will grow effectively."(pg.223). It was very interesting and beneficial to me to learn about the conscious competence ladder and how deeply understanding  its four stages could help us as future leaders to  have a plan of action to help new teachers to explore their unused skills, to help them understand their hidden strength by using the positive guidance, by motivating them  through all the stages of their learning and discoveries. From my perspective, I believe that what can make us successful leaders is that we teach the skills we have to others. Therefore, it is essential to provide opportunities and resources for our mentees to practice the skills they have ,and to help others learn those skills in order for all of us to keep progressing. I mostly appreciated learning about the importance of shifting our mind from judging new teachers as they might be lacking specific skills to the fact that it is emotional intelligence gap. As I have learned in the previous reading knowing that emotional intelligence is something that you can acquire and learn , it is important to make sure that our mentees know that they can ask any type of question , they can take risk in their own learning, and they have to be reflective in order to learn from their mistakes and to continue to grow .In addition, helping new teachers to develop a perfect  system  of time and energy management would come from the fact that you as a leader would be able to implement this first because that would help them learn from your credibility . 

# data[].attributes.subject
As Educators, our goal for our students is to be lifelong learners , and in order for that to be fulfilled , we have to be lifelong learners as well. As Elena pointed out " with a deeper understanding of your learning development, you will grow effectively."(pg.223). It was very interesting and beneficial to me to learn about the conscious competence ladder and how deeply understanding  its four stages could help us as future leaders to  have a plan of action to help new teachers to explore their unused skills, to help them understand their hidden strength by using the positive guidance, by motivating them  through all the stages of their learning and discoveries. From my perspective, I believe that what can make us successful leaders is that we teach the skills we have to others. Therefore, it is essential to provide opportunities and resources for our mentees to practice the skills they have ,and to help others learn those skills in order for all of us to keep progressing. I mostly appreciated learning about the importance of shifting our mind from judging new teachers as they might be lacking specific skills to the fact that it is emotional intelligence gap. As I have learned in the previous reading knowing that emotional intelligence is something that you can acquire and learn , it is important to make sure that our mentees know that they can ask any type of question , they can take risk in their own learning, and they have to be reflective in order to learn from their mistakes and to continue to grow .In addition, helping new teachers to develop a perfect  system  of time and energy management would come from the fact that you as a leader would be able to implement this first because that would help them learn from your credibility . 

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This school year the principal and I have become aware that as a whole, our staff struggles with communication, in all the forms they take place, very much including with each other.  We want to focus on improving communication skills because we have found that staff who struggle with communication also  have lower resilience.  You can see them literally change throughout the week as they become more frustrated and tired.  By Friday they are either just at the edge of exploding (which has happened more than a few times) or they walk around talking about how thankful they are it's Friday because it means they don't have to be here tomorrow.   We want to design experiences that allow them to communicate better with students, parents, and staff so that they can have a more even and balanced experience as teachers.  The week should not be spent burning down their wick to the nub, there's just nothing healthy about it. I also greatly appreciated the writing on trust.  It really is so essential in our work.   Defining it more clearly to include character and competence while providing a checklist of sorts is a useful tool for assessing trust I have or do not have with a person or institution.  Further, I found myself asking, "Hmm, I wonder how my staff views me in this four point checklist?"  Am I being the leader I need to be to earn their trust?  Are there things I have done that violated their trust in me?   I also appreciated the writing on conflict and preparing for difficult conversations.  I had a difficult one on Friday afternoon with a staff member and it went pretty well.  I actually practiced the words aloud and also had my intentions for the meeting clear, all of which helped my communication.  Learning and teaching others how to have healthy conversations around conflict is such a huge element of creating a thriving learning environment.  All schools will have conflict, so it's essential that we learn how to navigate through it with calm and purpose.

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This school year the principal and I have become aware that as a whole, our staff struggles with communication, in all the forms they take place, very much including with each other.  We want to focus on improving communication skills because we have found that staff who struggle with communication also  have lower resilience.  You can see them literally change throughout the week as they become more frustrated and tired.  By Friday they are either just at the edge of exploding (which has happened more than a few times) or they walk around talking about how thankful they are it's Friday because it means they don't have to be here tomorrow.   We want to design experiences that allow them to communicate better with students, parents, and staff so that they can have a more even and balanced experience as teachers.  The week should not be spent burning down their wick to the nub, there's just nothing healthy about it. I also greatly appreciated the writing on trust.  It really is so essential in our work.   Defining it more clearly to include character and competence while providing a checklist of sorts is a useful tool for assessing trust I have or do not have with a person or institution.  Further, I found myself asking, "Hmm, I wonder how my staff views me in this four point checklist?"  Am I being the leader I need to be to earn their trust?  Are there things I have done that violated their trust in me?   I also appreciated the writing on conflict and preparing for difficult conversations.  I had a difficult one on Friday afternoon with a staff member and it went pretty well.  I actually practiced the words aloud and also had my intentions for the meeting clear, all of which helped my communication.  Learning and teaching others how to have healthy conversations around conflict is such a huge element of creating a thriving learning environment.  All schools will have conflict, so it's essential that we learn how to navigate through it with calm and purpose.

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Optimism and the concept of telling empowering stories fused together as two symbiotic concepts was something that I had not thought of before. I at times can be a cynic, because you know, behind every cynic is a disappointed idealist. Thank you George Carlin. In college I was struggling with an overburdened workload when my professor pulled me aside and said I needed to turn my attitude around. I was unaware that my negative self-talk was so obvious to others. Since that day I have carried around a simple saying in my wallet: Improve your performance by improving your attitude. But it was still not always easy to do. A big takeaway for me was understanding that telling empowering stories to myself and others can create optimism. How do I choose to interpret a situation? What story do I attach to it and how does that story become a part of me? Does it build my resilience or eat away at it?  Chart 3.1 is a great tool for identifying distorted thinking, as the author called it. I can see myself and others I work with in these descriptors. Labeling it in such a clear manner provides clarity to the damage they can do and the importance of avoiding that type of thinking. My other main takeaway was the practice of intention setting. Giving myself the "opportunity to declare how I want to be in a situation" is a proactive approach to engaging with life s a whole. When I know my intention is for a situation I am better prepared to honor that intention, especially situations I think might be challenging. I was at the Missing Voices Summit this year at Saint Mary's and a guest speaker spoke a lot about how too often as teachers the stories we tell are not empowering. They disregard our profession and the power of what we do. We tell stories that demean our work and over time, they become true.  As a building leader I must tell stories that cultivate resilience, stories that honor our work and the cherished students we serve. What I put forward becomes our truth.

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starting to read this chapter, I was able to reflect on all the moments of frustration I had feeling that our district or may be our building have an  ineffective system for EL students , and how that leads to an equity issue. However learning about the two path of habit and mindfulness, I realized that I might have not handled all those moments well and how that might had a negative effect on my students , also I realized that the time has passed and the world didn't end , so I should have let go , I shouldn't not have felt irritated and empowered, I should have thought about  the situation before make any negative responses, as Elena Aguilar advised " Take a second to recall a triggering incident a response that you regretted " (pg.127). It is a matter of forming this habit and how that can help you control your responses to a stimuli, in addition it could help you to preserve and maintain positive relationship with staff as well as students. I also appreciated learning a about what is mindfulness mean, when Elena Aguilar referred " On this path, we notice our feelings, have awareness of their origins , accept whatever is happening in the moment and are intentional about what we say or do next" (pg.127) ,and how I use it as a strategy that can help me not only as an educator , leader , but also can guide me through my personal life, and support me to fulfill my purpose . I  strongly agree with author that we all have unconscious bias that might affect how we act and how Elena explained that " Although these often operate below our level of consciousness , they shape our views and affect our behaviors" (pg.134). considering Elena's statement "mindfulness and compassion practices help  create the general conditions that minimize bias. " (pg.137). I believe that learning about our socioidentities  and others' different backgrounds would help us understand different perspective , and that we become more culturally responsive to others .

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starting to read this chapter, I was able to reflect on all the moments of frustration I had feeling that our district or may be our building have an  ineffective system for EL students , and how that leads to an equity issue. However learning about the two path of habit and mindfulness, I realized that I might have not handled all those moments well and how that might had a negative effect on my students , also I realized that the time has passed and the world didn't end , so I should have let go , I shouldn't not have felt irritated and empowered, I should have thought about  the situation before make any negative responses, as Elena Aguilar advised " Take a second to recall a triggering incident a response that you regretted " (pg.127). It is a matter of forming this habit and how that can help you control your responses to a stimuli, in addition it could help you to preserve and maintain positive relationship with staff as well as students. I also appreciated learning a about what is mindfulness mean, when Elena Aguilar referred " On this path, we notice our feelings, have awareness of their origins , accept whatever is happening in the moment and are intentional about what we say or do next" (pg.127) ,and how I use it as a strategy that can help me not only as an educator , leader , but also can guide me through my personal life, and support me to fulfill my purpose . I  strongly agree with author that we all have unconscious bias that might affect how we act and how Elena explained that " Although these often operate below our level of consciousness , they shape our views and affect our behaviors" (pg.134). considering Elena's statement "mindfulness and compassion practices help  create the general conditions that minimize bias. " (pg.137). I believe that learning about our socioidentities  and others' different backgrounds would help us understand different perspective , and that we become more culturally responsive to others .

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In regards to resilience and community, research shows that you have to be in healthy relationships to thrive. At the foundation of a healthy community is trust. Before we can build trust, we have to have an understanding of trust. With this understanding we can make decisions that boost resilience and use it to help us find strong, healthy communities, in which teachers stay and children thrive. There are four strategies for building community: refine communication, learn from body language, focus on cultural competence, and address conflict. In a healthy community, members have high levels of empathy for one another. "Community can be built every day, in every interaction with another person, when you listen, bridge differences, and embrace healthy conflict" (p. 122).

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My principal occasionally reminds our staff to speak positively about our school. I always knew I should do that. However, after reading this chapter, I have a better understanding of the power that lies in the stories we choose to tell. As the author of own stories, we can either boost or deplete our resilience by what we think. I was able to relate to Aguilar's example of your principal not saying good morning when you pass in the front office before school. When that happens, I immediately think What did I do wrong? It's all about how I'm interpreting the situation. My interpretation is producing an emotion. To change how I feel, I have to change my thinking. Three routines especially powerful for crafting new stories are visualization, affirmations, and intention setting. It is reassuring to know that optimism can be learned and strengthened. Be intentional about cultivating your optimism by being mindful of the stories you tell.

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I went to a one-room country school that had seven grades and one teacher; in fact, I had the same teacher for the first seven years, then had her again the following year when 8th grade consolidated with the big school in town. I went from a class of three students to a class of 113. Talk about culture shock. To this day, I am convinced the "townies" never ever had the least bit of interest in knowing what our community of 45 in the entire school built as we grew up together as close as brothers and sisters. Going to town on the bus, I rode together with a lot of native students who had their one room school just down the road on the rez. Somehow, being rural and being native weren't really all that different, so when I had my first teaching job on the rez it really felt like going home. It is hard to describe the impact boarding schools had on native people, where the entire focus of the school was to kill the Indian to save the man. Many literally died, for they would be routinely beaten as the elders told it for speaking Ojibwe, and they would set it up so the boys and the girls who were strictly being kept apart in dormitories would agree to sneak off into the woods and do their round dance, careful not to be their drumsticks not too loud to be heard by guards. Two years after I came to the tribe, there was a massive student boycott that led to a walkout just before Christmas. By the week after Christmas, we were running our own school -- the first tribally-owned school in the state of Wisconsin with more than a hundred students. We all had gone to school in town where only about a quarter of the students were native, quiet for the most part, and sat in the back. One of my classmates reminded me that we were all sitting in the same history class when the instructor looked at her at said out loud in front of the class, "Why are you even pretending to be studying, Joyce. You know you will never finish school, will go home with your boyfriend, become pregnant, and stay on the reservation." The other kids laughed, and Joyce reminded me of this only a couple of years ago, when we were both in our late 60's. Have times changed? I appreciated this chapter, but somehow it didn't dig deep enough. Even as we try to instill cultural sensitivity into our training models, so many still don't get it. We laughed in the tribal office when the head of our Opioid Task Force talked about what came out of a small grant we had been awarded. The grant paid for someone to come from the twin cities to teach the task force about cultural awareness: the lady telling the story cracked up in the telling. The man who came was African American, and she literally hooted when she said, "So he came here to tell us what it is like to be Indians!"

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One of the earliest 8th grade experiences I remember from school was when a native story-teller came to our school and confronted more than a thousand kids at all grade levels and simply began to tell a story. It was in 1959, the middle of winter, and his story was about this little native man who always dreamed he was invincible - with a bit of a temper - who took on the challenge from one of the town athlete warriors who heard the little man bragging as to how fast he could run and saying, even to this well-proportioned, muscular, and much taller man that he could "easily" outrun him in a race around the lake. The little man took on the challenge since he knew in his mind's eye that he was easily going to win this thing. The town gathered to watch the event, and someone served as judge to say "Go" with each running around the lake in opposite directions. This was not an easy lake to run around, for there was mud and rushes and branches drooping down that blocked the pathway at several points. As the day wore on, people were not surprised to see who came in first, size and muscle mattered. So they waited, and waited, and waited for several more hours. Almost into the night, at the very edge of the place where they all began, someone yelled to the others that he could hear the bulrushes rustling, and they all paid notice when at last they split open and this little man, sweaty and breathing hard, finally popped into the open -- and looked around to check to see if he had won! Only when the challenger came toward him, cooled from having rested in the shade for most of the afternoon, did the little guy know that he had been soundly defeated. Everyone noticed how disappointed he looked, how he gasped hard for air twice, and how he slumped over, totally exhausted, and breathless. He was breathless, for he had died. And everyone looked around as if what just had happened was extremely important. The warrior athlete who came in first was also the first to go see if he could revive him. He stooped down to one knee, gently lowered his hands beneath the fallen dreamer, and picked him up so easily as if holding a young baby. Everyone saw no pain on this little guy's face, but rather deep satisfaction, a race well run, but lost. And they learned from that: though small in stature, this little man had such heart that the race was worth the cost. He was satisfied, and they called him Little Big Man as his story continues to be told to this day, as jets fly overhead, though small in stature, a man with such great heart will always win. Funny how I remember so much of his story nearly a lifetime later, I remember the power of that story on the audience, how no one spoke, and how the story-teller walked so quietly off the stage. I am sure I have changed it a lot in my own retelling over several generations, but its truth still holds. This chapter gave great credence to the power of story-telling, something native people have shared for centuries. There are a lot of truths here that can be shared with training educators, who in turn will test their stature and heart on so many occasions.

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I currently work in a district that consists of many small rural towns that have consolidated over the years to become one district. The distance from one end of the district to the other is about 60 miles. There is a secondary school that consists of our 5-12 students and there are 2 elementary buildings that consists of our Pre-K-4 students. One of the elementaries is at the South end of the district and is referred to as "South" and the other is at the North end and referred to as "North." Now I realize that is it not unusual to have more than one elementary building in larger districts, but in rural districts it is more rare. The point I am getting at, and the thing I thought about while reading this whole chapter, is that although both elementary building collaborate with each other, have professional development with each other and are considered ONE district there is a lot of talk among staff that the "South" elementary is more welcoming, has a positive environment and is basically more fun to work at than the "North" location. There have been many teachers that have taught at the "South" school, transferred to the "North" school and said they would go back to "South" in a heartbeat because of the community there. Well guess what? I teach at the "North" location, and always have, and this saddens me. I have lost sleep trying to figure out why, how, and what makes the two buildings so different. Why is the community at "South" so much stronger and better than at "North?" This chapter helped me look a little deeper into a few things that could be causing this. Cultural competence, in regards to gender and generational differences and how each building addresses conflict are the two areas at the top of my list. Most schools have these same issues, however, my school isn't doing anything about it to change it. Perhaps this course and particularly this chapter is my sign that I need to be the one to begin the process of building community. What do I want a community that I am involved in to have? Trust, ability to listen, inclusion of everyone, healthy conflict that's resolved maturely, acknowledgement of accomplishments and being intentional in what you do both on a professional level and a personal level are a few things I would like to have in a community. Would my co-workers agree? I honestly don't know. Since I have been working in this district we have not once talked about building community. I could go on and on about this, but I know that "North" has some community building to do and it will not be an easy process. However, I know it can be done and I am willing to make it happen. Any suggestions?

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I had many take-aways from this chapter.  However, there were two that really stood out for me.  The first being, what you think is how you feel.  Multiple times throughout the chapter Aguilar stressed this point in many different ways but it always boiled down to the same thing.  "If you want to shift the way you feel, you must shift the way you think." (pg. 71)  When situations occur, your interpretation of it produces an emotion which leads to how you will feel.  If your interpretation is negative you are likely to feel bad, stressed and or anxious.  It is up to you to change or improve your interpretations.  This will result in a more positive emotion and thus feeling better.  This is definitely something I am working on.  These types of situations, where changing your story will make you see things differently, pop-up on a daily basis.  The more I begin to recognize then and change them, the more optimism and resilience I will have.
The second take-away I had was the section on core beliefs. Appendix E helped me identify my problematic core beliefs. Now it is up to me to weaken those beliefs and replace them with a more positive belief. My new goal is to remember that I have the power to control my thoughts, so what am I going to think?

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starting reading this chapter, I thought about how we as teachers are aware about the importance of building a community in our classroom, to make the students feel that they are belong which would help to create a meaningful learning environment for them , and in fact teachers need this as well in order to be able to learn from others' experiences ,as Elena Aguilar stated that " forming community goes straight to the heart of what makes our work so rewarding. it is where connection and joy lay." (pg.96). I also believe that it would be very beneficial to start one of the professional development session with all teachers discussing the two different perspective of Maslow and Liberman about community building, and which one would they be able to validate ?  and may be that would help to reflect on the importance of community building within an organization. I have seen it first hand  in my previous district when five new teachers had to quit in the middle of the year because they weren't able to handle challenging behaviors, and honestly I found my self blaming out administration team at this time,as these teachers were lacking the support. As a matter of fact, this particular school had a hard time maintaining teachers and that explains Elena Aguilar statement" Teacher don't leave strong communities, and children thrive in strong communities". (pg.97). Learning about the foundation of a healthy community makes me think that as teachers we need to build strong positive relationship with our students, and to try our best to get their families involved and engaged in their kids' learning. On the other hand, I believe that in order to be a successful leader is to build trust between you and your teachers, but I also realized that it is not that simple, it is something that you have to actively seek to do As Elenal Aguilar explained " Cultivating trust and creating the conditions for healthy communities are the primary charges for all leaders whether you are a teacher building community in your classroom, a principal building trust among staff, or a superintendent building trust with the community you serve." (pg.103).  My favorite part of  this chapter is when I read about body language is both universal and cultural , here is my answer to the author's question " can you think of a time when your nonverbal communication might have been misinterpreted ? " (pg.110) , the answer is yes, I use a lot of hand gestures when I talk , and that is very middle eastern culture, but I found out that a lot of people get threatened by that, and they think that I  am angry until my one of my colleagues addressed that in a friendly sarcastic way. So I realized that I have to do something about that , but it was hard to change as it is apart of who I am, then I end up clarifying in the beginning of any conversion ,  that my had gestures are part of how I culturally communicate, and I  think that what makes a difference the fact that I addressed conflict , also I was able to examine my sociopolitical identity which resulted in creating  a healthy communication.                                                             

# data[].attributes.subject
starting reading this chapter, I thought about how we as teachers are aware about the importance of building a community in our classroom, to make the students feel that they are belong which would help to create a meaningful learning environment for them , and in fact teachers need this as well in order to be able to learn from others' experiences ,as Elena Aguilar stated that " forming community goes straight to the heart of what makes our work so rewarding. it is where connection and joy lay." (pg.96). I also believe that it would be very beneficial to start one of the professional development session with all teachers discussing the two different perspective of Maslow and Liberman about community building, and which one would they be able to validate ?  and may be that would help to reflect on the importance of community building within an organization. I have seen it first hand  in my previous district when five new teachers had to quit in the middle of the year because they weren't able to handle challenging behaviors, and honestly I found my self blaming out administration team at this time,as these teachers were lacking the support. As a matter of fact, this particular school had a hard time maintaining teachers and that explains Elena Aguilar statement" Teacher don't leave strong communities, and children thrive in strong communities". (pg.97). Learning about the foundation of a healthy community makes me think that as teachers we need to build strong positive relationship with our students, and to try our best to get their families involved and engaged in their kids' learning. On the other hand, I believe that in order to be a successful leader is to build trust between you and your teachers, but I also realized that it is not that simple, it is something that you have to actively seek to do As Elenal Aguilar explained " Cultivating trust and creating the conditions for healthy communities are the primary charges for all leaders whether you are a teacher building community in your classroom, a principal building trust among staff, or a superintendent building trust with the community you serve." (pg.103).  My favorite part of  this chapter is when I read about body language is both universal and cultural , here is my answer to the author's question " can you think of a time when your nonverbal communication might have been misinterpreted ? " (pg.110) , the answer is yes, I use a lot of hand gestures when I talk , and that is very middle eastern culture, but I found out that a lot of people get threatened by that, and they think that I  am angry until my one of my colleagues addressed that in a friendly sarcastic way. So I realized that I have to do something about that , but it was hard to change as it is apart of who I am, then I end up clarifying in the beginning of any conversion ,  that my had gestures are part of how I culturally communicate, and I  think that what makes a difference the fact that I addressed conflict , also I was able to examine my sociopolitical identity which resulted in creating  a healthy communication.                                                             

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When I read Elena Aguilar's statement " you can craft a new story while you are learning  to recognize distorted thoughts, but the new story may not be as powerful as it could be if you haven' deconstructed your distorted thoughts and exposed them as the erroneous creatures they are". (pg.). I realized that the power of storytelling is the fact that it has a to address our emotional responses to a stimuli. Reading about the simple scenarios that are common stressors for teachers, I personally found that I can relate to some of them, for example the fact of misinterpreting the situation and the fact of jumping to conclusion and how  Elena Aguilar referred that this  " can  intensify emotional distress" (pg. 73). I believe that we are as humans are struggling with interpreting the situation in a positive way because we fear to let people who we care about down. However, it is a relief to know that the ability of practicing to identify our thoughts, and to acknowledge our feelings can help us to change our perspective about a situation, and improve our emotional responses to it. Through my practice as a teacher , I always appreciated the fact that affirmation and positive langue always motivate my students to do their best and to increase their self confidence, but I also learned in this chapter that it is worth trying that with my self first in order to be able to teach it to my mentees. My  biggest take away is realizing that the fact learning how to craft your own story in a positive and optimistic way can enable you to shift your feeling about a situation and help you to deal with it in a very productive way as Elena Aguilar pointed out that " Storytellers have always held key positions in society; the stories we craft predict our futures, encapsulate our legacies , and impact our resilience". (pg.93).

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When I read Elena Aguilar's statement " you can craft a new story while you are learning  to recognize distorted thoughts, but the new story may not be as powerful as it could be if you haven' deconstructed your distorted thoughts and exposed them as the erroneous creatures they are". (pg.). I realized that the power of storytelling is the fact that it has a to address our emotional responses to a stimuli. Reading about the simple scenarios that are common stressors for teachers, I personally found that I can relate to some of them, for example the fact of misinterpreting the situation and the fact of jumping to conclusion and how  Elena Aguilar referred that this  " can  intensify emotional distress" (pg. 73). I believe that we are as humans are struggling with interpreting the situation in a positive way because we fear to let people who we care about down. However, it is a relief to know that the ability of practicing to identify our thoughts, and to acknowledge our feelings can help us to change our perspective about a situation, and improve our emotional responses to it. Through my practice as a teacher , I always appreciated the fact that affirmation and positive langue always motivate my students to do their best and to increase their self confidence, but I also learned in this chapter that it is worth trying that with my self first in order to be able to teach it to my mentees. My  biggest take away is realizing that the fact learning how to craft your own story in a positive and optimistic way can enable you to shift your feeling about a situation and help you to deal with it in a very productive way as Elena Aguilar pointed out that " Storytellers have always held key positions in society; the stories we craft predict our futures, encapsulate our legacies , and impact our resilience". (pg.93).

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One of my big hopes for this course was to learn more ways to engage in difficult/challenging conversations.  This chapter definitely presented some useful tools for that.  I appreciated the way the author used compassion as a means not just to take action on our empathy but also as a way to widen, “our understanding of another person to include her complexity and potential”.  In this way I can use compassion to see the whole person, “zoom out” as she describes it, to gain a better understanding of the other person, so that I can open myself up to their perspective.  Instead of closing down, digging in my heels, or giving up on a person or a conversation, I can use compassion to do as the 7 Habits suggest, “Seek first to understand.”

The 10 tips for dealing with difficult people was also highly beneficial to me.   Some key ones that stood out to me were:

1. “Cultivate awareness of common ground. It's there, somewhere.”

The idea that there is something somewhere within this difficult conversation that we can connect on and build from, brings me hope and the courage to be persistent.

2. “Make sure you're not holding on to a fixed mindset about their ability to grow“

I know for a fact that I have done this.  Reminding myself that everyone has the ability to grow, especially the people who challenge me most, is a great way to approach difficult conversations.

3. “Stay clear about your own values.”

I have to remember as a building leader that healthy tension can be okay, especially when it comes to core values.  Letting go of what I believe in for the sake of harmony isn’t leadership at all.

I also resonated with the comment that, “if you've got a difficult person in your organization, you need to act with compassion for all of the other people who are affected by this person— the students, staff, and community.”  We had to dismiss a teacher this year for this very reason.  It was hard, not fun in any which way, but the actions of this teacher were draining the energy right out of the school.  We cared for this teacher and did all we could within our abilities to coach her, but she just would not change, and in the end, our ethical dilemma resulted in supporting the community over the individual. It felt cold, but it was an act of compassion for first and foremost the students, but also the staff and the learning community as a whole.

Equanimity was a new concept for me. “When we accept the way things are, we can think ‘Now, what can be done’?”.  That is a sentence that needs to be posted in every school in the world.  It instantly focuses my energy to do everything I can do within what we have.  As a colleague once told me, “Let’s stop talking about what we can’t do and focus our energy on what we can do.” it shifted my mindset from the mystical “they” who were holding me back and created a great self-efficacy in the power I do have to engender transformational change.

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What I appreciated most about this chapter was the intentional time taken to explore emotions.  Too often, especially for adults, they are cast aside as something that should not be shared and should definitely not be asked about.  Functioning in a school where emotions, especially the  “bad” ones, are to be set aside so we can get to business, is such an unhealthy way to operate.  How can teachers learn to respond to their emotions in a positive way if they are not even aware of or allowed to engage with their emotions in the first place?  I will absolutely be printing off Appendix C, the core emotions and using that in my coaching of my staff and students.  What a powerful way to help provide clarity for people.

I will admit that until I took a leadership course two years ago, I had not heard of emotional intelligence.  I know that sounds kind of crazy, but I just didn’t know about it.  It changed everything for me. Understanding self-management, self-awareness, social awareness, and relationship management skills has helped me see that, as the author states, “it is a set of learned abilities”.  Well heck, with a growth mindset I can learn anything, so I just needed to be intentional about my emotional intelligence.  It’s an interesting thing though because it isn’t something you have and then suddenly you’re all good.  It’s a constant growth piece, at least for me.

Another  key takeaway for this chapter was the sentence: “Learn to recognize your emotions as messengers, as potential sources of energy, and as a fact of human existence. This allows you to pause when emotions come barreling in and to understand what they want to tell you. Change how you think about emotions and you'll change how you experience them.”  That’s everything right there.  If we can help teachers to engage in the practice of intentionally pausing to identify their emotions, especially in times of anger, they will be better prepared to respond to their emotions in a positive, productive, and healthy manner.

Finally, I just loved the sentence, “You are responsible for knowing your anger.”  As a society, we all just need to hear that over and over again so we can learn to slow down, breathe low and not fall prey to the amygdala hijack.  I will use this with my students.  They need to know that anger is a real and valid emotion. The aggression that comes from it however, is most certainly not.  That’s such a great way to frame the thinking.  I really appreciated this chapter.

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Compassion, which literally means "suffering with," helps us face the interpersonal challenges we face every day. It has to be cultivated and refined. Aguilar suggests that we think of compassion as a muscle we have that needs to be strengthened. Before we can have true compassion for others we have to have self-compassion. To practice self-compassion, we have to identify the painful emotions that come about because of difficult circumstances and the critic inside ourselves. We also have to understand that we're not alone. Lastly, we have to give ourselves kindness when we make a mistake, fail, or suffer. Then, we'll be able to learn and grow. By opening ourselves to a wider perspective, we'll be able to see and accept things as they are (equanimity), empathize with and connect with others, and find the strength and creativity to respond to a situation.

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It is my understanding that values are formed at a very early age and tend to change less than we would like to believe, so this notion that values are more changeable than I previously thought is interesting: it gives me more optimism that people can continue to rethink their core values and change them over time. I am also aware of the cultural filters which have an impact on how we interpret and apply words: on the rez, the word "race" is generally rejected in favor of the word "ethnicity" since, as Aguilar's definitions suggest, the word "race" is socially charged much more than "ethnicity." Traits deemed "socially significant" can always be challenged to the degree they reflect biases of those who are in charge, the valorized. By allowing such social conventions to insert value-based biases into interpretations of "race," huge groups of individuals are marginalized to the detriment of society as a whole. This leads to placing more emphasis on understanding ourselves (gnosis) through the sociopolitical lens as Aguilar suggests. The dominant vs subordinate structure that emboldens some at the expense of others is on display across our political landscape right now, and those who perpetuate it feel there is nothing wrong with that. Can we ever hope that those who think this way can ever change the biases which impact their value systems most? So here I am heartened by the notion that values do change (hopefully for the better) throughout a person's lifetime. My takeaway is that there was a lot that was good about the 60's, particularly when it came to challenging the authority of those who exert their authority over others simply because they feel they have the moral imperative -- and value's based mindset -- to do so. How sick, in many ways, the politics of "core values" has become. A good message to improve leadership as well as governance.

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I didn't realize, until after reading this chapter, just how important it is to explore my emotions and to have conversations about emotions in order to educate children. I learned that there is a six-part cycle of an emotion: prompting event, interpretation, physical response, urge to act, action, and aftereffects.  I thought about an event I experienced this week that triggered an emotion cycle. I now know that I can intervene at any step of the cycle. I am in charge. In the past, I've usually waited for someone to pick me up. I appreciate Aguilar's idea of recognizing my emotions as messengers and as potential sources of energy. Identifying your emotion is the first step in responding to it. "Understanding our emotional self allows us to discern our options and, ultimately, to accept what we can't change and put our energies toward what we can" (p. 66).

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It is nice to read a book focused on the uniquely stressful situations encountered by educators. I appreciate the way Aguilar dissects the domains into individual resilience, organizational conditions, and systemic conditions. I would like to believe that each of us has the power to cultivate our own resilience, yet I am not convinced this is as easy as it initially sounds: understanding a problem about who we are, for example, requires us to examine our genetics, values, and personality. Of these three, we have no control over genetics, little control over values which are engrained at a very early age, and little control over personality except by force of will. So I really see her book honing in on force of will to change personality. When I became a school administrator and was looking to hire a new teacher, I used to say the best interview would be to place a teacher candidate in a room with 20 students at the grade level she wanted to teach, then open the door 45 minutes later and check her disposition and that of her students as they came out. I have seen teachers, and I would call them the uniquely elite teachers, come out of situations like this absolutely gleeful, as if they had gained some superpower simply by being in the presence of kids! I have also found this personally inspiring, trying to emulate such teachers myself. The key for me – and Aguilar mentions this when she talks about the Jewish survivors she grew up noticing – is their incredible sense of humor after having suffered unspeakable tragedies. One of the things I look for today when conducting teacher interviews is their sense of humor, not only because it influences the organizational conditions of everyone around her, but also because it helps them manage those situations which are often intense and never-ending in and out of school.

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This is an interesting chapter, because it connects science and religious philosophy in interesting ways, suggesting the science of compassion is catching up with what we have all been taught is "the right way to be." I personally feel Aguilar could dig even deeper, that somehow the Buddhist perspective and the viewpoints expressed by Nelson Mandela and others is particularly profound, but also commonsensical in a way. We have all seen students, especially the youngest of students, offer sympathy, empathy, and raw compassion for classmates they observe and engage in any number of ways in class and out of class. Yet, we also see children who hate (as the book title once wrote), and this often seems driven by a sense of justice: "that's not fair." I like the notion that we all are compassionate by nature, but I am not quite ready to be so generous. The case of the bully principal who knew which of his teachers was vulnerable and then proceeded to bully her is instructive: ultimately, Aguilar intervened and agreed a grievance needed to be filed so that justice could be served. To me, that story just sort of hangs there: the resolution did not rise to the level of reconciliation Mandela would have sought to achieve. Just interest, because we all soon recognize as teachers that the bullies are themselves victims of bullying, and how do we break that cycle without getting to reconciliation? Compassion has one more dimension, it seems to me, and that is mercy as Willy would say "which droppeth as a gentle rain from heaven upon upon the place beneath."

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Emotional intelligence as a concept and branch of educational research has been interesting for me to watch over the course of my career. Initial research made it clear that this aspect of multiple intelligence research was difficult to quantify or disaggregate to the point where it could be described as a type of intelligence in its own right. So I have generally poo pooed it, but enjoyed this chapter because now I see how what many researchers were so skeptical about years ago is evolving as a science. I read Aguilar's comments as "intelligence about emotions," more than as a way of knowing as Gardner first expressed it. It is helpful to categorize, quantify, and label things "scientifically" if for no other reason than we can manage things we feel, as this chapter suggests, at the personal as well as scientific level. But here is my conundrum: I have always felt I was born without the anger gene. I seldom lose my temper: in fact, most of my closest friends including my wife, and my students tell me this is weird. For some reason, my sense of humor always kicks in before my anger even gets to the point of hyperventilation. Maybe it is a "Kool Hand Luke" sort of thing (sorry, that's my generation of movies). But I have to say I am increasingly comfortable with (I will call it a more contemporary approach) where it is OK to cry -- even if you are a boy -- or a teacher. My final thought on this is that I was raised by a mother with Asperger's, and maybe I learned from her somehow that emotions were not to be endured or controlled by; rather, something of a matter of curiosity which we can all take in an process in much the same way the author suggests. like the hand of cards which have been dealt, as one example she uses. I like that.

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Emotional intelligence as a concept and branch of educational research has been interesting for me to watch over the course of my career. Initial research made it clear that this aspect of multiple intelligence research was difficult to quantify or disaggregate to the point where it

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I like how Aguilar stated, "compassion is empathy in action."  I feel I have empathy for others, but this chapter really made me aware that I rarely act on it, with other adults that is.  However, with my students I feel I act on the empathy I feel for them on a daily basis.  So it made me wonder why I can have compassion for my students, but not for my peers and colleagues.  Relationships with peers and colleagues has always been hard for me.  I now realize that I need to practice acting on my empathy for others in order to show compassion to make the relationship better and stronger.
Another point that Aguilar made was, "Compassion for others must begin with self-compassion."  Being a resilient person includes knowing yourself first.  Everything leads back to yourself; self-awareness, self-knowledge, self-compassion, etc. It is so important to know and connect with yourself and to have the strength to realize you can make a difference.  Failure and mistakes are a part of life.  Nobody is perfect.  Accepting your mistakes, learning from them and giving yourself kindness builds self-compassion.
Finally, I found the sections on dealing with difficult people to be very helpful.  Whether it be a difficult colleague or a difficult parent I need to always look for one good thing about that person.  This will open up my perception of that person and perhaps I will then find a connection with that person that I wouldn't have found otherwise.
Compassion is uplifting and can lead to a happier, healthier life. I am excited to start acting on my empathy more often and building my compassion for others and myself.

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Emotions are powerful!  Being able to recognize, understand and accept our emotions is even more powerful!  Much of the time we just manage our feelings and hope the situation just goes away.  Guess what?  It usually doesn't go away and even more emotions are brought into the equation and sometimes depression and anxiety arise.  Although it is hard to do, talking about your emotions is one way we can keep our body and our mind healthy.  Aguilar stated it best, "with understanding of emotions, you can accept their existence, recognize where you can influence a situation and let go of what is outside your control."
Reading this chapter made me recognize some big emotions I have been experiencing with a colleague lately. While reading each section I found myself thinking about this colleague and trying to figure out what exactly was going on and how exactly I felt about it. I became more aware of my own self-awareness. I made a conscious decision that I needed to approach this colleague about our situation and I actually did it! After months and months of stress and anxiety being around this person I can finally breathe a little. The situation is not totally resolved, but I now recognize how I feel about it. I understand it better and now I need to accept it. Moving forward I hope to build my social awareness and social management so I don't have to experience another situation like this one. This chapter has definitely helped me build resilience and find a source of energy and strength that I didn't know I had. Recognizing, understanding and accepting your emotions is truly powerful!

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I have previously mentioned in chapter that I am confident that  I am confident that I would be able to sympathize with new teachers when they experience any challenging situation, as I was in their place before. However, I realized that  this is not the enough support that my mentees really want, this is not enough to inspire them to continue their journey as educators. After reading Chapter 8 , I realized that this is what Compassion mean , as Ellena Aguilar stated that " Action is what distinguishes compassion from empathy" (pg.199), and how important to have a plan of action. It was very surprising to me to learn about all the scientific behind the practice of compassion and how that could improve our health specially when Ellena Aguilar referred that " it is literary preventive medicine" (pg.201). Also , I was able to compare between how we have learned in the previous chapters that four components of emotional intelligence build on each other and the importance of having self- compassion in order to develop compassion for others   , as Ellena Aguilar referred" compassion for others must begin with self-compassion. you can't have compassion for others if you don't have it for your self ." (pg.206).in conclusion, I believe if we learned how to be compassionate with our students, our mentees, and leaders, we would be able to transfer this practice into our personal life, and with all the conflicts that we encounter everyday !

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I have previously mentioned in chapter that I am confident that  I am confident that I would be able to sympathize with new teachers when they experience any challenging situation, as I was in their place before. However, I realized that  this is not the enough support that my mentees really want, this is not enough to inspire them to continue their journey as educators. After reading Chapter 8 , I realized that this is what Compassion mean , as Ellena Aguilar stated that " Action is what distinguishes compassion from empathy" (pg.199), and how important to have a plan of action. It was very surprising to me to learn about all the scientific behind the practice of compassion and how that could improve our health specially when Ellena Aguilar referred that " it is literary preventive medicine" (pg.201). Also , I was able to compare between how we have learned in the previous chapters that four components of emotional intelligence build on each other and the importance of having self- compassion in order to develop compassion for others   , as Ellena Aguilar referred" compassion for others must begin with self-compassion. you can't have compassion for others if you don't have it for your self ." (pg.206).in conclusion, I believe if we learned how to be compassionate with our students, our mentees, and leaders, we would be able to transfer this practice into our personal life, and with all the conflicts that we encounter everyday !

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Through my practice, I have struggled with controlling my own emotions, with letting go, and with feeling guilty all the time about getting emotional until I started to work with the district instruction leader who played a very important role in my career as an educator. He helped me to filter through the conflicts , and to evaluate it , to deeply think through it.in order to be able to control it . In fact, I can see why my coach was a great one considering when Elena Aguilar referred" Here's a key to cultivating resilience: learn to recognize your emotions as messengers, as potential sources of energy, and as a fact of human existence" (pg.50) . As a future leader, I am confident that I will be able to empathize with new teachers who might experience the burn out as I was in their place before. However, I am aware that I would have to go beyond being empathetic In order to help them through their journey, in other words, to achieve more productive results. I believe the key to fulfill that is to continue exploring our own emotional intelligence with it four components, and to continue practice it as Elena Aguilar stated that " These competencies build on each other" (pg.51). My biggest take away from this chapter, the fact that we have the right to  struggle with our emotion , and  to feel angry as long as we  continue transferring that into a positive energy which enables us to to improve our emotional intelligence, to guide us through our tough moments, as well as to help us improve our response to difficult situations and to become more resilient.  

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Through my practice, I have struggled with controlling my own emotions, with letting go, and with feeling guilty all the time about getting emotional until I started to work with the district instruction leader who played a very important role in my career as an educator. He helped me to filter through the conflicts , and to evaluate it , to deeply think through it.in order to be able to control it . In fact, I can see why my coach was a great one considering when Elena Aguilar referred" Here's a key to cultivating resilience: learn to recognize your emotions as messengers, as potential sources of energy, and as a fact of human existence" (pg.50) . As a future leader, I am confident that I will be able to empathize with new teachers who might experience the burn out as I was in their place before. However, I am aware that I would have to go beyond being empathetic In order to help them through their journey, in other words, to achieve more productive results. I believe the key to fulfill that is to continue exploring our own emotional intelligence with it four components, and to continue practice it as Elena Aguilar stated that " These competencies build on each other" (pg.51). My biggest take away from this chapter, the fact that we have the right to  struggle with our emotion , and  to feel angry as long as we  continue transferring that into a positive energy which enables us to to improve our emotional intelligence, to guide us through our tough moments, as well as to help us improve our response to difficult situations and to become more resilient.  

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Chapter 1:

My main takeaway from this chapter was that exploring self and getting to know who I am, what I value, and how I function best in this world, is a critical element to  improving my own resiliency.  As the authors states, “Self-knowledge helps us to be more confident about our actions and clear on our decisions.” By knowing who I am I can begin to make decisions that boost my resiliency.  It only makes sense that if I don’t know where I am at as a person, how can I accurately chart a new course to where I want to go? I have taken various personality assessments.  I know that I am an INTJ, but that is just the start of exploring who I am.  I need to be mindful to dig deeper and be more purposeful in knowing myself.  What I also found useful was having staff engage in these assessments so that they can know themselves and each other.  The more I understand the learning moves of my staff, the more effectively I can serve them.  A quote that really stuck with me on this topic was, “Understanding your own personality and that of others helps cultivate empathy and self-compassion— and anything we can do that cultivates those states is a priority.”

I also really resonated with the concept of a strength-based approach.  We know that a deficit mindset towards our students is a dangerous approach and the same is true for those whom we lead.  “With knowledge of your unique talents, aptitudes, and interests, you play to your strengths and wisely direct your energy.”  The text suggested that should be spending at least 50% of your time engaging in strength-based workflow.  Is that true for my daily work?  Is it true for those whom I lead?  I need to consider the strengths we bring more than the deficits that need filling.

I also connected with the quote, “All the research on resilience has found that resilient people are firm and clear on their purpose.”  Simon Simek talks a lot about knowing your “why” and the “how” and the “what” will follow.  Too often when we struggle as a learning community it is because we differ on our purpose, our arrows are not pointing in the same direction.  This can lead to frustration, disappointment, anger, and ultimately, despair.  How do I as a leader create a unified purpose for our work?  That is the challenge of any leader.   When are purpose becomes aligned, then our energy, our focus serves in function to that purpose.  It’s easier to wake up in the morning or work late into the night when you know your efforts are going toward a collective,  intentional,and meaningful purpose.  You gain a shared responsibility to the cause and that responsibility connects you and inspires you to persevere through challenges, fortified by the strength of the collective learning community.

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I had a lot of takeaways from this chapter. It seemed to be exactly what I needed to hear. I tend to take situations personal, but Aguilar wrote that if I have a deep sense of who I am, I will be able to navigate the many challenges I face every day as a teacher and distinguish between the external situation and me. Working from a strengths-based approach is not something I've really thought to do before. I've spent more time trying to grow in my weaker areas. However, Aguilar wrote that working from a strengths-based approach provides more energy to endure new challenges. To work from a strengths-based approach, you have to know who you are, and that means being vulnerable with yourself. "The better you know yourself, the clearer your purpose becomes," wrote Aguilar (p. 40). Explore your purpose.

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In the introduction of this book I believe the author makes a very credible case for the purpose of, and need for, her book.  The sobering stat was that 20% of teachers in the U.S. leave teaching every year.  1 in 5 teachers leaving the profession annually clearly proves the need for developing resilience in teachers.  I connected with the quote, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”  Often struggling teachers speak of losing control of the classroom or sometimes, themselves.  Helping teachers understand that their power lies in their response to what is happening will greatly help build their efficacy. Too often teachers can be solely focused on controlling everything that is happening and when they lose that control, they don’t know what to do.  Although it is important to focus on proactive skills in the classroom, developing reactive skills, or flexibility, are necessary too because  in some cases it is more productive to focus on how you respond to what is happening.  Taking that further, the author said, “A substantial amount of our ability to be resilient is fostered in our daily habits.” Given this it is essential that we help teachers “cultivate behaviors different than those in which we habitually engage”.  We need to help teachers develop new habits that result in responses to situations that free them from the cycle of conflict, stress, and defeat and replace it with empowerment.  When teachers feel empowered and have heightened self-efficacy, resilience grows.

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I love how Aguilar began the chapter, "When you know yourself well -- you understand your emotions, social identities, core values, and personality -- you gain clarity on your purpose in life and in work. Being anchored in purpose makes you able to deal with  setbacks and challenges." (pg. 21) This is so true. Knowing who you are and what you believe in will help guide you through those tough situations, build resilience and also help you to reach your fullest potential. By knowing yourself and having self knowledge it helps build confidence about how we react to situations and be comfortable with the decisions we make. On the other hand, when you are unsure of who you are you might make a decision about something or react to an uncomfortable situation and afterward feel terrible about it. Knowing who you are is a constant process and parts of you, your beliefs, values and sometimes even your personality may change overtime based on your experiences in life. As I continue to figure out who I am and what I believe in I need to remember that there are many part of me and all those parts need to work together to be whole in order to build resilience.

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Know yourself
Elena Aguilar referred that " Resilience is cultivated through hundreds of little choices every day. In order to make the best choice, you need to know yourself." p.g 23. Reflecting on that, I am very convinced that in order to have social awareness, you would have to develop self awareness first. It is essential to be able to explore yourself, your beliefs , your values , and your identity which would facilitate the process of building positive relationships which plays a vital role in achieving successful social awareness. In addition, knowing what you are capable of , what you are passionate about and what do you really want to achieve in life would shape the nature of your leadership career. Therefore , you would be able to maximize energy and improve your skills to become a successful leader who is making a difference. Being considered an international or a divers teacher, I was able to make a lot of real connections learning about the importance of knowing our values, the way we are and identifying our Sociopolitical identities. Also  how Elena Aguilar stated " The elements of your identity may be inseparable from other aspects of self( such as beliefs and values, personality, and psyche) because those are so deeply influenced by your sociopolitical identity, which has been a part of you since birth or childhood. " pg.29. I have always struggled with trying to have a balance between my cultural heritage and the new cultural that I am trying to adapt to , and how difficult to code switch all the time. No doubt that it is very difficult to get people to understand that the way you react to a situation, or the way you express your passion is for the most part tied to your different cultural background. On the other hand, trying to figure out a system that would enable you to align your  values and beliefs with others in terms of understanding your self and consider others' different personalities is the key to help you to gain insights about how can you become successful !   
Thank you for reading ! 

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Know yourself
Elena Aguilar referred that " Resilience is cultivated through hundreds of little choices every day. In order to make the best choice, you need to know yourself." p.g 23. Reflecting on that, I am very convinced that in order to have social awareness, you would have to develop self awareness first. It is essential to be able to explore yourself, your beliefs , your values , and your identity which would facilitate the process of building positive relationships which plays a vital role in achieving successful social awareness. In addition, knowing what you are capable of , what you are passionate about and what do you really want to achieve in life would shape the nature of your leadership career. Therefore , you would be able to maximize energy and improve your skills to become a successful leader who is making a difference. Being considered an international or a divers teacher, I was able to make a lot of real connections learning about the importance of knowing our values, the way we are and identifying our Sociopolitical identities. Also  how Elena Aguilar stated " The elements of your identity may be inseparable from other aspects of self( such as beliefs and values, personality, and psyche) because those are so deeply influenced by your sociopolitical identity, which has been a part of you since birth or childhood. " pg.29. I have always struggled with trying to have a balance between my cultural heritage and the new cultural that I am trying to adapt to , and how difficult to code switch all the time. No doubt that it is very difficult to get people to understand that the way you react to a situation, or the way you express your passion is for the most part tied to your different cultural background. On the other hand, trying to figure out a system that would enable you to align your  values and beliefs with others in terms of understanding your self and consider others' different personalities is the key to help you to gain insights about how can you become successful !   
Thank you for reading ! 

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Survive or thrive?  Resilience comes from within.  It is about our attitudes, behaviors and how we react in various situations.  Resilience is also knowing yourself and connecting with yourself.  Knowing who you really are and what you believe in.  Finally, resilience is slowing down, thinking before acting on and using those delicate moments in life to thrive rather than just survive.  Aguilar states, "if we slow down and examine these moments, if we cultivate new responses, we might just transform our schools into places where we all thrive."  That is the ultimate goal of educators, to help everyone, students and colleagues, thrive and reach their fullest potential

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Aguilar drew me in right away with the scene she describes on the first page. I can relate. I've been there. Aguilar explains the importance of educators attending to the moments between stimulus and response. How we respond in those moments, which is in our control, can transform our schools. I've never thought about that before. It's caused me to think about situations I've been in before (similar to the scene described by the author on the first page), how I reacted, and what I could have done differently in my response. I have to start with my own transformation. It's going to be a journey. On page 13, Aguilar stated, "[...] resilience ensures that we can keep our hearts open to what we see and hear." I want to build resilience, so I can manage the daily stressors of teaching and get back up after setbacks.

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Elena Aguilar states," The opportunity for resilience originates in how we make sense of the things that happen, because interpretation dictates actions" p.g 2.
reflecting on that I can view my self as a teacher fall for that sometimes with challenging students' behaviors especially in the middle school age. As a matter of fact , we sometimes struggle as teachers and as humans to interpret the theory behind that challenging behavior , and then we start reacting quickly with giving that students the appropriate consequence which I think that it doesn't really work to change the behavior in most cases. our role as educators is to have positive impact on theses kids' life and future not just academically but emotionally as well. we should be considering other factors before quickly respond . we always articulate student's behaviors as they are giving us a hard time instead of interpreting that as they are the ones who are having a hard time.  For example: we need to think deeply about the trauma that the students might have been experiencing or other reasons that causing that their brain can't process what I am asking them to do at this moment, and then you can pick the right time to give the consequences and that should be after you have really discussed with the students the reasons that make them act this way , and to inform them that you are empathize with them. I believe that it is all about the ability to change, to build,  to practice and as well as to  implement the emotional resilience on a daily basis. Also, how we should consider the importance of how we perceive others' thoughts as well as actions in order to control our responses.
Thank you for reading !

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Elena Aguilar states," The opportunity for resilience originates in how we make sense of the things that happen, because interpretation dictates actions" p.g 2.
reflecting on that I can view my self as a teacher fall for that sometimes with challenging students' behaviors especially in the middle school age. As a matter of fact , we sometimes struggle as teachers and as humans to interpret the theory behind that challenging behavior , and then we start reacting quickly with giving that students the appropriate consequence which I think that it doesn't really work to change the behavior in most cases. our role as educators is to have positive impact on theses kids' life and future not just academically but emotionally as well. we should be considering other factors before quickly respond . we always articulate student's behaviors as they are giving us a hard time instead of interpreting that as they are the ones who are having a hard time.  For example: we need to think deeply about the trauma that the students might have been experiencing or other reasons that causing that their brain can't process what I am asking them to do at this moment, and then you can pick the right time to give the consequences and that should be after you have really discussed with the students the reasons that make them act this way , and to inform them that you are empathize with them. I believe that it is all about the ability to change, to build,  to practice and as well as to  implement the emotional resilience on a daily basis. Also, how we should consider the importance of how we perceive others' thoughts as well as actions in order to control our responses.
Thank you for reading !