A couple of years ago, my therapist told me that the idea of "should" is the enemy of any healthy relationship. So often unhappiness results from a dissonance between our expectations and our reality, and the word "should," when applied to your partner and your partner's actions (my partner should be doing this certain thing), or when applied to one's image of one's relationship (our relationship should look this certain way), can cause all sorts of unrealistic expectations. My memory of this conversation with my therapist resurfaced this week as I did my weekly mental wrestling match with the realities of hybrid learning. I realized that "should" is a dangerous concept in a lot of different aspects of life, not just one's relationships, and that it had been surreptitiously lurking in my feelings and expectations about this school year and thus making me miserable. Honestly, I thought I was doing a great job of managing my expectations o...
I am a high school choir teacher teaching at one of the most diverse high schools in my state. I am in my fourteenth year of public school education, and I taught middle school choir for the first twelve. My program's mantra is "Embrace the Struggle," and that mantra continues to take on new significance in a time of great turmoil and upheaval.