Back to School!

Five ways we all can tap into our student within

By Maggie Catchick-Houghton

For me, the beginning of the year has always been in the fall, not in January. As a teacher I never kicked the school routine, moving smoothly from grade school to high school to college to my work, always with the change of colors and cooler air signaling the beginning of a new year!

Along with football games and school busses, come new supplies of crisp paper, pencils still smelling of wood, and every other supply you can think of from markers to sticky notes; folders to paperclips. And with it all, the promise of a new beginning, new things to learn, the potential of the new person we may yet become.

As a teacher I get to join in with the kids on their excitement at the new year, but as an adult I’ve also found great satisfaction in taking a moment to reboot, so to speak, and begin again. This is a time of year when we all can take stock and consider what goals we have yet before us, what changes we can work toward, and what ways to delve into the new things we’d still like to learn!

So these are my tips for Back to School and they aren’t just for students! I hope we all can find some new energy that comes from this time of new beginnings. 

1.     Appreciate the changes in nature. We are lucky in Michigan to have the best of all seasons, and the quickest changes will take place in the next few months! Don’t forget to get outside and enjoy it all from the last days of summer to the colors of fall and the excitement of the first snows. Taking some time for nature, no matter how much studying and work you have yet to do, is always a great way to recharge.

2.     Be sure you have the tools you need. Back to school is a great time for stocking up on those little necessities. These are the items that fill our need to create and organize, to be ready for whatever comes next. Use this time to get ready for the coming school year and coming winter as well. Get organized and feel prepared with what you need… just think what you might be able to accomplish!

3.     Open yourself to learning something new. The best part of school is that we get to discover new things we never knew before. But that doesn’t have to end with our school days! Consider something you’ve always wanted to learn or learn more about and get into it! The Cheboygan Public Library website offers the free Mango Languages program if you’d like to learn a new language; there are yoga classes and sewing classes; even starting a new fitness program or joining a bowling league might be an excellent way to fire up your brain by starting something new.

4.     Get ready to read! Reading is something required in most every level of school, but it’s easy to get out of the practice of reading when it’s no longer required in your life. However reading is an excellent way to calm and quiet your mind, improve your focus and concentration, and learn something new in the process. So, this fall, commit to finding something to read. Now that you are out of school and it is no longer required, there are so many options! Visit the Purple Tree bookstore to find a new novel or book that will teach you about history, philosophy or some country you’ve always wanted to know more about. Use the library as a resource to read about memoirs or genealogy, and maybe even as the inspiration to write about your own family history or your childhood. Read the newspaper and seek out articles online to become better informed about current topics relating to our upcoming election or foreign issues in China and Iran. “Assign” yourself a topic of study and then follow your research wherever it may lead you.

5.     Set goals for the new year. Every year my students begin with setting goals for their learning and their personal lives and that’s a practice we can all take advantage of as the students head back to school. Unlike January’s resolutions that are made and forgotten by March, goals are set with an intention of reaching some place new and have measurable standards that can be monitored as we go. Your goals may involve getting healthy or spending less, but should be marked by clear guidelines you can monitor such as decreasing how many times you eat fast food or the amount you spend in certain routine situations. You can set goals for how many pages a week you will read or how many miles you will walk. Goals may extend to how much time you spend with family and friends or even keeping a gratitude journal to be mindful of your blessings each day. Setting goals and monitoring them each day or week can bring about a great sense of accomplishment. Before long we begin to find our new practices become routine and we have indeed grown and changed who we are, maybe not in a big way, but bit by bit. Just as we grew in our education each school year. It’s never too late to grow a bit and learn something new. And that’s why each fall we all need a little “back to school” to get us ready to learn again.

published in the Mackinac Journal, September 2015

My Advice to High School Seniors

My Advice to High School Seniors

 

My advice to seniors is simply this:

never listen to anyone’s advice.

Those words come from places of

experience, it’s true, but are

covered with cobwebs of regret and

longing, the caked on dust of disillusion,

they are shadowed by a life

that is not yours – nor will it ever be.

Don’t stop for advice or directions or a map

when the future stretches before you.

In fact, don’t stop for anything

unless it is to notice the way

sunbeams dance along the waters,

or trees swaying in the afternoon breeze,

the crinkles at the corners of your grandfather’s eyes

and the way your dog’s fur smells

after he comes in after an hour of

basking in the sun on the back porch.

May you come to something… unexpected!

Never tell me the odds...

It's a funny thing about playing the odds, paying attention to statistics, and gambling on a million-to-one prospect in hopes that you will be that one: I believe none of these extremes in itself can show us the right path to take.

We run the risk with any of these extremes of allowing numbers and the actions of a great many others who've come before us to control our destiny. And
despite what anyone says, I do not believe our individual destinies are able to be looked at as a mathematical formula.

Rather, I am reminded of that scene in Jurassic Park when Dr. Ian Malcolm (played by Jeff Goldblum) attempts to explain chaos theory by showing the unpredictability of determining which way a drop of water will roll off a human fist. There are simply too many variables from air, to movement, to surface irregularities, to the size of the drop to make any kind of prediction. Life is just like that. All the odds and statistics in the world will still mean nothing when that next drop is placed and follows its own unique set of circumstances to the right, left, front or back.

Yet time and again I see my students in their senior year trying to work out the formula as they face the wide open future before them. They look at numbers because they believe these hold safety for them. They consider what schools will offer them the most money, what the rankings of schools are, which career path is listed as "up and coming", what the average test scores of freshman are, and how much the median salary of those employed in various fields is now and is predicted to be in the future. They look at numbers and statistics, working out the magic formula which will lead them to = success.

Are they wrong to do so? Not at all. I often provide, post and encourage my students to consider these numbers and statistics as they are looking at their future path. I am certainly not so naive as to say that these numbers don't matter and aren't part of helping them determine their path. They certainly are and should be. My concern is when decisions are made on an equation built of these numbers alone.

Just as each drop of water will find its own way, through its own unique circumstances, each student too is unique and what is right for one, or forty-one, or a hundred and forty-one students who went before them does not guarantee it will be right for this one. There are other variables which must be considered as we chart our path into the future, and they are much more difficult to "nail down" in a report or with a number. Students must consider which environment will allow them best to grow and what fields of study appeal not only to the logic of their minds but also the passion of their souls.

These are scarier questions for students to tackle because they require knowing oneself and honesty in the face of many many expectations of others who all have their own opinions on the matter. Here, once again, we face the risks and rewards of letting go of all the expectations and advice of others and forging an individual path onward. The students who go forth after their passion, despite the odds, run the risk of a barrage of "I told you so's" and the insistent pull of self-doubt. They remind me of another movie hero… Han Solo (played by Harrison Ford) from Star Wars who faces not only the doubts and fears of his shipmates when he plans to fly into an asteroid field, but also the ready statistical odds, spouted by the robotic calculations of C3PO who informs him his odds of success are 3,720 to 1.

"Never tell me the odds!" says Han Solo… and perhaps this is advice we all should take to heart. Han is not unaware that the odds are against him. He can see that as plainly as anyone else. But a decision must be made, and in his heart he feels this is the way to go. Talk about taking on a risk! Would it be the right choice every time? For every pilot? Probably not! However there is no time to sit back and weigh every option to the nth degree. There comes a time when a decision must be made and the very best we can hope for is that when that time comes we make a choice with head, heart and confidence all in tow.

As my students go forth this spring to new colleges, programs, cities, jobs, military commitments and destinies, I will never be that robotic voice repeating the odds in their ears. I will hope to instill in them rather the hopefulness expressed by our family's motto: "Go confidently in the direction of your dreams!" ~ Henry David Thoreau.  Their paths may take many twists and turns, stops and starts, but truthfully the confidence to move forward is what is most necessary. For, in the end, the success I wish upon all my students is also not something that will ever be defined by the numbers of salary calculations or advanced degrees or bars and stars on a lapel. The success I wish for them is as different to define for each as the curves and tunnels in the human heart. It is success that for each drop may go right or left, back or forward, and may never even know the extent of its reach, as ripples created by one drop grow outward wider and wider than even the individual can see.

This spring as our students step forward to begin their lives on their own, never tell them the odds. That time has come and gone. Rather applaud and encourage their confidence to go in the direction of their dreams, and believe in their courage and passion. Our optimism for their future is truly the best gift we can give them.

From parent to friend

The toughest thing about being a parent is that long after our children are grown and no longer need "parenting," we are still their parents.

They say the best sign of good parents is to raise a child who no longer needs them, but what does this look like from the parents' perspective? How does it feel to be no longer needed?

Even more to the point: who does a parent become when he or she is still a person's parent, but must no longer do what defines the role, namely, parenting?

The trick is to walk a new path… one where the parent and child -- always a parent and child yet no longer the parent of a child at the same time -- learn to know and accept each other as people.

These two souls have shared so much, yet there is another birth that comes from the recognition of this younger soul as a person in their own right. There is no guarantee they will agree with each other or even like each other, but there is also no way to know unless each tries.

It is this stage in life where liking may be even more important than loving. The bond of love between parent and child is instinctual and instant… the bond of friendship and mutual admiration that comes from truly knowing one another takes time and slow steps. It is a conscious choice made after one looks for connections and builds upon true respect which comes from choice and not simply adherence to the formalities of age.

Nothing will change the connection of love between a parent and child, but the connection of friendship can be something even greater. It is a scary prospect to enter into for both sides as there are no guarantees… perhaps avoiding the possibility of rejection is why so many parents refuse to give up parenting, denying their children a place as real people in their world, and so many children refuse to give up rebelling against and fighting the authority of their parents, afraid to see the adults who raised them as the flesh and blood, flawed beings they are.

It is a different path to walk to accept each other as full people. But in the end, the rewards just may outweigh the risks.