What a lot of you don't know about me is that I used to teach; in fact, I'm licensed for grades 5-12 in English/Language Arts/Reading and sometimes I really the classroom and how it shaped me as a person.⠀
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I was looking through old albums today, and found these pictures of a board I made for my high school classrooms. Each of the classes are listed on the bottom, and each black space is for writing an "I can" statement, based on the Iowa Core standards (I went to college in Iowa btw). ⠀
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These photographs are fitting because I published a piece on my blog (Word & Sole) today about turning "cant's" into "cans" and the powerful impact such a small change can have on us.⠀
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I think sometimes we're so focused on all the ways we fall short, or are inadequate, or don't measure up to the people around us that we forget all we're capable of. You know?⠀
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I struggle with this so much. Just a few hours ago, I was trying to record a video and BAM right in the middle of it a freaking plane goes across the sky and ruined the whole thing. I wanted to cry. I don't have enough editing experience to know how to really fix things like that and instead of celebrating what I DO know how to do, and settling for imperfection in some of the things I might not be as strong at, I let that moment make me all upset for the rest of the morning...and literally writing this to you right now just re-grounds me back in the piece I wrote earlier — instead of focusing on what I can't do, what if I focused on what I CAN?!⠀
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What if we stop comparing and talking negatively to ourselves? What if we inhaled love and positivity instead of doubt and fear?⠀
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In my classrooms I always started the day with an "I can" statement to ground my students in what they were learning and give them confidence in moving towards the day's objectives.
