HOPE, upon reflection
I got IDEAS
It’s the beginning of the end of my 25th year of teaching. I’ll give myself a B+ and my students an A-. I’m being generous on at least one of those counts.
As a teenager, I decided to commit my career to public service. I thought I had a clear vision of what that would look like. I did not, however, envision living this long.
I also didn’t envision teaching in times quite like these.
Teaching high school in the 2020’s means navigating minefields of distraction, disconnection, and deep-seated anxiety. The classroom, once a relatively predictable space—often predictably dull for many, if not most students—now feels more like triage. Students suffer fractured attention spans and vulnerable emotional imbalances strained by isolation, instability, and overstimulation.
We teachers also tend to feel frazzled and fractured and strained. We face mounting pressures, staffing shortages, politicized scrutiny, a rising tide of anti-intellectualism, and ebbing morale. In the age of standardized metrics and performative achievement, the deeper empathic mission of education—building relationships, fostering resilience, sparking curiosity—often gets sidelined.
But I still firmly believe, perhaps now more than ever, the classroom still matters. The classroom remains one of the few spaces where people gather, in person, to earnestly wrestle with problems, stories, and each other. It is a space for making meaning and sharing ideas in a fragmenting world.
To cultivate such a space, I need to carve out more time than ever for reflection. So as I begin to steer this struggle bus to the end station, I’ll seize this space to briefly reflect. This space is, after all, devoted to the intersection, The Junction, if you will, of my passions.
As I begin look back on the school year, I am reminded of a post I published in August when I paused to reflect on my first week back in the cage after summer break. I penned something of a vibe check after I dove headfirst, cautious but confident, into season 25 of this kooky sitcom. A cautiously optimistic meditation, I dubbed it My Warrior Emotion: Lazarus Digs Hope. I printed an excerpt of this post and taped it to the inside of my file cabinet, along with other snippets of inspiration. Works for me. Check it out.
Inspired by one of my favorite podcast guests (and favorite ex-girlfriends), I aspire to be, as Shana framed it, a “hope junkie.” As a daily practice, I strive to make hope my default position. Nick Cave, poetically describes hope as an “adversarial position” and a “warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism.” Like a warrior, I perched myself in that adversarial position with a decent modicum of discipline this school year.
Perched in that position, as a birthday gift to myself, I penned and published what turned out to be be of my fave Junction posts. Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Difficult Times explores the intersection of Mexican politics, American democracy, the NFL, women’s golf, voter turnout, Martin Luther, the Vatican, the gerontocracy, and abortion. Yup. Weaved those threads. Seeking hope? Read it.
My point is, I wrestle with hope. Like, a lot. So I was beaming when, on their own accord, without even a nudge from me (I swear!), the stellar students in my student activist club (my Woke AF Squad) voted to devote their fourth-quarter edition of their journal to the theme of Hope!
You should read it. Hot off the presses. It’s deliciously interdisciplinary, exploring intersections of: history, philosophy, psychology, gender studies, geopolitics, media studies, and environmental policy. You should read it because, in a thoroughly Gen Z fashion, it inspires hope.
So as I shamelessly promote my lil’ Gen Z Warriors, I wish you hope and health and healing as we slide toward summer.
Love,
DL
P.S. Please consider supporting these kids. The JFKS IDEAS club humbly seeks donations to support our podcast, our journal, and our community initiatives. If you share our values and have the means, please support us over here. Every little bit helps.