It’s summer, and once again, I commit myself to developing and sustaining my writing habit. I started this post during during my first full week of summer vacation, but it has taken me about three weeks to slowly loosen the tentacles of school obligations from my mental to-do list, clear my mind, steady my breath, and give myself over to the pace, freedom, and autonomy of summer.
This year even more than normal, I’ve found myself chafing against the 8-period day, the dictatorial bells, and the fragmented nature of life in a U.S. high school. It’s always energetic and busy, yes, and adolescents and their teachers always surprise me and make me laugh…but the relentlessness of bells that ring every 44 or 45 minutes, forcing my story into a new chapter (or at least a new scene below three asterisks, which the internet tells me is called a dinkus) has worn me down in a unique way.
I want to write my own story—both professionally and personally. And in the summer I get to do just that. Here are some story snippets from my year, and some ideas about stories to come.
The story of a teaching sandbox
Dr. Lechtenberg said she would teach the class herself. For when a mid-year resignation occurred, I could see that there wouldn’t be a substitute teacher available for one group of 28 juniors, so I stepped into the teacher role on a cold January day, with the energy of the first bright day of school.
What a lark! What a plunge! (Ok, I’ll stop with the Mrs. Dalloway write-alike). Or so I thought in the first days and weeks when the excitement of getting to know my students, planning lessons, and choosing poems to share was new and fresh. In the early days, I did a lot of frantic and excited verbal processing with my fellow instructional coach + office mate, and I wrote an energetic post with the intention of chronicling my teaching adventures.
But then, my utopian visions began to clash with the challenges of teaching in the age of an alphabetic menagerie of educational imperatives (HQIM, PLCs, SRG, GLEAM, and on and on…). And the story of my teaching sandbox—which was originally a dreamspace to explore and play and build castles made of language and literature and writing and my students’ ideas and questions—became more about sand in my eyes and under my nails, and the paralyzing feeling that I could never dig myself out of the pit of things I (felt like I) had to do in order to do the things I wanted and knew my students needed to do.
Despite my partially unrealized dreams, I’m glad I taught and that my students taught me this semester. I will be a better coach and educator and leader for it. Because above all, they gave me more questions to ask.
The story of relentless questioning
There once was a curious, critical educator who couldn’t stop asking questions: What might happen if we tried a new approach? How can we look at more perspectives and possibilities? How can we make it clearer? How can we show teachers and students that we know they have genius and creativity inside of them? What might happen if we invite more people to the table? Where could we go if we shake off what we’ve always done?
She asked so many questions that some people higher in the institutional hierarchy (i.e., further from students and teachers) got tired of her questions and subtly (or not-so-subtly) suggested that she trust them to ask and answer the questions instead. And the curious, critical educator got frustrated. And sad. And tired.
So sometimes she pulled the punches on her questions, or kept silent altogether. But that didn’t stop the questions from coming, from boiling up inside her, sometimes venting hot anger to anyone who would listen. At first she thought the occasional vent would do the trick, but quickly she saw that even the venting didn’t relieve the pressure. In fact, it often just polluted her entire mindscape and soulscape.
And then she realized: she had been neglecting a better kind of venting strategy—But it was still hers to reclaim. So she brought back her focus on writing through professional frustration, and slowly, she began to bring more calm, quiet, and intentionality into her moments of frustrated questioning. Not all questions should be asked in frustration, and she began working on a way forward.
The story of balancing righteous anger and a healthy soul
All happy schools are alike; each unhappy school is unhappy in its own way. Or, even better: All functional institutions are alike [in that they do not exist]; each dysfunctional system is dysfunctional in its own way.
For a while now, I’ve been loosely quoting Leo Tolstoy when I talk about institutional dysfunction in our schools. Despite the many well-meaning and brilliant people that work on our schools, governments, and other major social systems, our problems are so complex and our priorities often competing that our systems are often chronically imperfect and dehumanizing in ways no one intends. To be sure, there are a few people motivated by greed or prejudice who poison systems, but by and large I do believe that most people working in social systems like schools want to see the most justice done for the most amount of people.
So when we fall short—and we so often do—in our attempts to build just systems, I am filled with righteous anger for the injustice, inequity, and trauma that harms already vulnerable and marginalized students, families, and educators. It’s righteous anger because ethically, morally, cosmically, it shouldn’t be this way, and I join with many others as co-conspirators and allies who can’t keep letting injustice happen without trying to be part of the solution.
But. Also. This righteous anger at unjust systems can poison my overall well-being. The story I must begin writing will be about how I balance the just anger that fuels my work with an intentional and hopeful ability to step away from anger and embrace calm, curiosity, and love. I hope that this balance and these steps will better fuel my work and allow me to more fully embrace the relationships and practices that keep me human.
The story of a literary geek
Call me Summer Kate. On one of the first days of summer, I began reclaiming layers of my neglected self while writing in my morning babble journal, reciting on the page the 5th stanza of Walt Whitman’s Song of the Open Road that I had memorized twenty-five years ago. I looked up the poem online to make sure I had it right (was it “I can repeat over to men and women” or just “repeat”), and as I scrolled the other stanzas, I wondered, exactly how racist was Whitman? The freedom of summer and nowhere to be led me a PBS article about Whitman and race in America, then to a JSTOR blog about whether Walt Whitman should be cancelled, and finally to June Jordan’s 2006 essay, “For the Sake of People’s Poetry: Walt Whitman and the Rest of Us.” Summer Kate is a literary explorer.
Three weeks into summer, I am wallowing in books: my home office, my bedroom, and my entire house are full of stacks of books to read, and I want nothing more than to lounge around and read them. And I keep adding to the stacks. My partner and I are between two legs of a tour of independent bookstores in Iowa, and after visiting eight bookstores in two days (our favorites so far are in McGregor and Oskaloosa), and I am relishing my new purchases and the days and weeks ahead that will be filled with these new stories.
Dwelling in the minds and lives and visions of other people I respect helps me steady my breath, let go of institutional and relational stress, and begin to craft my own next chapters.
The next chapter(s)
Afoot and light-hearted, I take to the open page. Health, free, the month before me, the long, open days before me, leading wherever I choose. And this is what I choose: calm, intentional breathing; writing and reading to rouse my best self; being in thoughtful relation with everyone and everything I encounter. I am sure I will begin the next academic year better for it.
Kate Lechtenberg, PhD 
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