Every year ITE hosts something called Achievement Days. Essential, Achievement Days are an opportunity for our students to perform for other faculty members and receive.

This year the event was held over the course of a week– taking the place of standard lessons. There are three teachers in each room and each students has 10 minutes. Teachers are paid as if it is a standard week. Students have a supercharged lesson experience.

My perspective on Achievement Days is that it is beneficial for students, but it is profoundly healthy for teachers.

The work of teaching can be so isolating and can flow past as in a constant deluge. The sands are always shifting and we feel like we must deal with that constant shifting alone.

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At the recommendation of Carrie Reuning-Hummel I picked up and read Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman.

The book resonated with me deeply because it gets at many of the philosophies of life I already embrace. I am curious to what extent his book shifts people who are actually enrolled in productivity traps and planning paradoxes. We’ll see what impact this resource has on culture at large– based on the delay it took to get the book, already in it’s second printing, I have some idea.

Though I consider myself a member of the choir to whom he is preaching, I’d like to underline some of his points and indicate the shifts the book will have on my life.

His ‘time management’ system is simply an examination of time itself. If you start from the abstract, from the top, from the reality of death, then to-do lists seem absurdly silly. Most things do.

It’s an effective way to put our weeks into context.

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The more I meditate on this principle the truer it feels.

You can’t become what you cannot visualize yourself becoming. And you can’t become anything you aren’t already visualizing.

If you visualize your failure, you will become that failure.
If you visualize your success, you will become your success.

Herin lies the power of affirmations and environment.

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As I began caring for a one year old in 2020 I realized how little I know of the ‘parenting’ literature and early childhood education pedagogies.

Because 9 of the 25 students in our studio attend a Montessori school I was curious about the philosophy. I began checking out books from the library and watching videos online. My favorites here, here, and here.

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