Walking Away

I grew up in Mt. Vernon, New York about thirty minutes north of New York City. When I lived at home, we would get three newspapers every day. We got the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the local Gannet paper. With the physical papers in our home, doing the crossword puzzle became a habit from a young age, along with the jumble. When sudoku was introduced, I added that to my routine.

Truth be told, I still subscribe to a physical newspaper. I know, I know roll your eyes. We get the Burlington Free Press for four days as a part of our digital subscription. But for me, there is something about having the physical paper in front of me, with a pencil, trying to fill in all the blank squares from the three puzzles in print.

The reality of our life means that I rarely have the time to sit down and complete all three puzzles in one sitting. Often, I leave puzzles half done but near a couch, by my bedside, or in a comfortable corner of our home. Sometimes I can complete one of the puzzles (I usually do the jumble first) and then I work on the others. And sometimes I find myself sitting there stumped by one of the puzzles, unable to make any headway.

When I come back to a puzzle that I'm part way through, I often see patterns I didn't before. Clues that have stumped me make more sense. A blank square looks different and I'm able to fill in more spaces the second or even the third time around. While I'm happy to see things differently based on my change in perspective, I often don't seek it out. It's necessitated by our family schedule.

I think we need to seek it out more often. I think we need to find a different perspective sometimes. I think it's more than OK to walk away.

As educators, we care very deeply about the students we serve, the families they come from, and the community we are surrounded by. We have lives outside of our professional world, we have our own families, we have our own pressures to contend with. And when problems arise, as they always will, the instinct is to respond as quickly as we can.

Our world is full of devices, often within reach, that can give us a one-way microphone with which to respond to a problem. It would be easy to send something out, to react to the issue, and provide an answer. Unfortunately, when we choose to react so promptly using our technology, we don't get the benefit of seeing how the response lands with the person who is reading our words.

Might it be better to pause before hitting send? Take a deep breath? Use our technology to set up a time to speak on the phone or, even better yet, meet in person?

Perhaps it would be better if we first walked away. Then we would have a chance to fill in some of the blanks.

Photo courtesy of www.sparklesandsippycups.com