Category: Word of the Year

Monday Musing–One Little Word

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Do you choose a word for the year instead of making resolutions?

I’ve tried New Year’s Resolutions, and I keep them precisely twenty-four hours before I forget them, or just plan ignore them. More than ten years ago, I learned about choosing a word that would set intentions for the year instead of resolutions. Intentions are plans. Sometimes, we can turn our intentions into actions; other times, we have to let the intentions go. Intentions can be goals, and we turn those goals into something concrete. I like this idea of setting intentions. If I abandon an intention, I am not failing. I simply let it go.

This year, I joined Ali Edwards’s One Little World project. It’s been several years since I followed her project with the monthly prompts. I’m going to work on that this year; it’s one of my intentions to be more mindful of my chosen word. This year, I chose the word “MANIFEST.” For the last week or so, I have been hearing the hymn “Songs of Thankfulness and Praise” by Christopher Wordsworth running through my head. The refrain of that Epiphany hymn goes “God in man made manifest.” I am a life-long Lutheran, and my Lutheran heritage is generational, going back to my German ancestors who settled in what is known as the Dutch Fork region of South Carolina. My maternal grandmother’s ancestors were Austrian Lutherans from Salzburg who settled along the Savannah River in Georgia. Lutheranism runs deep. So, the spiritual idea of “manifest” is the first thing that comes to mind.

As I began to explore the word, I thought about other ways “manifest” might appear in my life. To “manifest” can mean to reveal, to make apparent or evident or obvious for everyone/anyone to see. To manifest something might be to imagine it or create it. When something manifests itself, others can see it.

I know the word has some more “New Age-y” connotations and has been linked to the notion of the Law of Attraction–the idea that if we visualize or imagine something in our lives, that thing (wealth, fame, popularity, success) will be attracted to us. I don’t even want to go there. I want to explore ideas and see what appears. In the spiritual sense of the word, I want to see how God manifests Himself in the world around me. I want to see how I can manifest Jesus to others as well. I want to look for these ideas.

This month, I am going to follow along with Ali’s One Little Word prompts and see what ideas “manifest” themselves. In the meantime, though it is “the bleak midwinter,” I will look for God in the natural world and in other people.

One Little Word 2017

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In January, I chose the word DARE as my one word for the year. Something happened along the way. I sort of dropped out of following the word through the year.

But then, something else happened. I dared to go back to full-time teaching! I started a new job with Newberry Academy. I took on the head of school’s “dare” to teach/advise the desktop publishing class, aka yearbook, something I’ve never, ever done before. And I “dared” to teach world history. Keep in mind, I am a certified ENGLISH teacher. I’ve never taught a social studies class before in my entire career.

I love it! I love teaching in a small, intimate private school. I know my students—and am getting to know their parents on a first name basis. Seriously. Of course, I discovered that I’ve taught some of the parents before in my life as a public school teacher. And then, there is the one student whom my own son taught when he was the middle school band director in town! That’s a sobering thought. . . . I have a son old enough to teach middle school students who are now my high school students.

This year, as I looked at Ali Edwards One Little Word class and wondered momentarily whether I should take it or not—and I am—my word came to me:  GROW.

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Odd.  I will be sixty years old in February 2018. And I feel I am still growing.  I talked to the head of school last week and told him I’d like to take the AP certification course this summer. He’s willing to pay half tuition. I believe it will “grow” me as a teacher. Besides, I haven’t taken a formal literature/education class in more years than I can remember. I am looking forward to professional growth.

And I signed up for the “graduate” course with Emma Davies and A Year with My Camera. I want to grow as a photographer. I will be teaching my yearbook students more about photography next year so that we get some really interesting story-telling photographs for the yearbook.

I want to grow as a creative person. I want to grow my writing. I haven’t put much effort into my novel in the last weeks. I plan to do that during this Christmas holiday break. I am going to live up to my word that I won’t answer any emails until I go back to school on January 3. Nope, I just won’t do it.

There is the old saying, “Bloom where you are planted.” Well, I may not “bloom” this year, but I do intend to grow—personally, professionally, creatively.

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The Third Quarter Has Begun

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I realized I have not written since June.  So much has happened since my last post, namely I am leaving my part-time teaching position to take  full-time teaching job in a local private school beginning in two weeks.

This is the year of living daringly, of taking chances, of stepping into new possibilities.

Moving back into secondary education is definitely something I had not expected to do, though the possibility has always been there. And now that I think about it, I am ready to take this dare.  It will certainly be a challenge with six preps, including two things I’ve never done before professionally: teaching World History and advising the school yearbook/Desktop Publishing class.  I said the head of school (aka headmaster) suckered me into the latter assignment.  But seriously, I would not have accepted it if I had not wanted to give it a try.

Going from teaching four days a week to five, teaching for four weeks with a month off between mods, will certainly take some getting used to!  I will have to figure out ways to keep up with my creative pursuits and my photography in different ways.  I will also have to figure out new ways to work in practice time at the piano.  Jack’s wedding will be here before you know it!

I hadn’t given the word of the year much thought in the last couple of months, but somehow, I think the dare was working in the background. I realize that I have been out of the secondary classroom for six years.  I will have to re-evaluate what I have been doing for the last few years at Remington.  I will have to re-learn how to relate to teenagers and preteens (I will have that one class of squirrelly seventh graders! In a way, I am looking forward to teaching those middle-schoolers!) And I will have to give myself the pep talk almost daily that I can teach World History.  (It’s just another form of ELA, right?  Reading, thinking critically, analyzing, synthesizing. . . . )

And so, a new school year begins. . . . .

Besides, this new teaching job gives me an excuse to shop the school supplies and office supplies and find really neat stuff to use!