The Storyteller...

It's been a while since I wrote, for me writing takes mostly inspiration, in other words I have to be "In Spirit", but it also takes time, commitment, passion, heart or at least a couple of those components and lately my life is undergoing many changes, twists and turns and I'm focusing mostly on that.

I get inspired to write about something all the time, but lately when that happens my mind is either too tired to let the words flow or I'm doing something else at the moment.

I'm convinced that I was born to be a "Storyteller". I believe I've always known that but what I didn't know when I was growing up was that you're not supposed to postpone what "You're Born to Be", judge yourself for the way you do it or compare with others that do it as well. I grew up knowing that I had to do better than I did, I was told that by my parents, teachers, surrounded by others who did do it better than I did, I just got by. Looking back I realize that one of the reasons I never became passionate about anything while I was growing up like others did was the way school was taught and my own personal abilities to learn.

Now that I've been working for the school system and see how diligent they are at addressing every single child and teaching them the best way the child learns better, I realize how much of the education I was offered I missed because I just couldn't focus on all that information they offered me, I could retain some things but others I couldn't, my mind would wonder into this Magical World of Storytelling.

I could make up stories about anything as far back as I can remember. I believe that if school had been taught in a Storytelling manner I would have learned better, but it took me till I was living alone, on my own for the first time in my life, in my late 50s to realize this and now in my 60s I've only begun to scrape the surface of all those stories that I've held inside for so many years that seem like so many lifetimes ago, now only a handful of those millions of stories are still somewhat clear in my mind.

There are many ways that we engage in stories, it can be something as simple as someone next to us riding the bus home at the end or the beginning of the workweek, a total stranger we had never seen before or most likely will never see again, he or she has a story to tell like we all do, all that story needs is an audience other than yourself so it can be told, so if you were to engage in a short conversation with that stranger you may know things about them that could change your instant interpretation of them while perhaps identifying with a part of their story. And just by you listening to their story you are allowing it to be told. The person telling their story will get some sense of relief because having a story in your mind can weigh you down or excite you and by being able to tell someone about it you're either sharing on the burden or the excitement while connecting through it with another soul.

This is more evident than ever in this era of Technology, all you have to do is look at almost any site, especially those with platforms that lend themselves to the telling of one's own personal story which are in fact the most successful ones, ie. Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, Instagram, Youtube, any dating site, but it doesn't even have to be just Social Media it's also any company that has created a Website,

I know at least for myself that if I'm going to look at a company I have the habit of looking at the area where it says ABOUT US and the reason I do that is because I like humanizing the experience no matter if it is to buy a pair of shoes, some business cards or deposit at the Bank, I feel more of a connection when I realize there is someone behind all these words on a screen that are offering me a product or a service. Just like we did before the Internet changed the way we live our lives.

The other day I came up with some quotes that made a lot of sense to me:

"The plain fact is that the Planet does not need more successful people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restores, storytellers and lovers of every kind. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people with moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these qualities have little to do with success the way we have defined it".
~ David W. Orr - Ecological Literacy: "Educating our Children for a Sustainable World".

"The purpose of a Storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon".
~ Brandon Sanderson - "The Way of Kings".

We all have a story to tell and we all have the need for someone to listen to our story and at least for myself I want my story to be an ADVENTURE!

 Envision your story on a large movie screen and ask yourself "Would I go see that movie, is it interesting, will it hold my attention, is it going to make me laugh and cry and feel every emotion intensely, do I like how the music in the background makes me feel, did it teach me something, was it worth my time, how do I feel when I walk out of the theater, uplifted and energetic, sad and drained or perhaps with anger, fear or despair?

Would I read the book and buy the movie when it comes out on video so I can watch it again and again or will it be one of those movies that we see once when it comes out on TV in the weee hours of the morning when there is nothing else to watch and when you're 1/2 way through the movie you realize you already saw it once and didn't care for it?

Go make your life what you want it to be so you can be in total harmony with the story you tell. Believe me it's worth it, I know, I'm The Storyteller....

Hugs xoxo
@nit@

Now I Know my ABCs...

I just realized lately that I've been involved in Education my whole life, first as a student then as administrator, teacher, interpreter, volunteer, I was one of those school mom's who was always in my kids classrooms, I would teach the kids in their class Spanish as a volunteer. I didn't want to be the President of the PTA much less their entourage I wanted to gift the kids who were my children's friends and neighbors with the ability that was innate to me, what came natural which was my birth language.

I have seen so many changes in the amazing evolution of education. My trajectory is interesting because with the standards that Education has nowadays I would have definitely qualified for special education services. This is the recollection I have of my childhood education which is not really a lot because I didn't like going to school too much, for one I used to live right across the street from my school, it was a private bilingual school instead of the Jewish Paroquial School all my cousins and Jewish friends went to. So every time we went to Temple where my dad used to work as an administrator, which was just about every Friday night for Shabat Services, or to the CDI every weekend, I never had anything in common with all the kids that were there. I mean we played the same but then they'd go away to their lives and I went off to a different life experience.

My dad would say that his priority was that we speak English, so instead of sending us to Jewish Paroquial School to learn values and exotic languages like Hebrew, to find out first hand about our heritage and go on trips with my friends to Israel and be with all those kids that we were surrounded by in every event that we attended. We were Jews in a land of otherwise Catholic Indoctrination so we stuck together as a group.

We'd go to the "Centro Deportivo Israelita de México" CDI or the JCC here in the US. You have to understand that my father was "The Master of Ceremonies" for the Jewish Community, he broke the barriers and would MC for Ashkenazi as well as Sefaradic Jews. There was then a palpable separation. We each gravitated to our own, as if we were a different species. I never understood that part of the community.

So my education having been a totally other face of the coin in a way wound up alienating me from those friends I would frequent whenever I was not in school. I never felt like I belonged on either side. I always felt "Parallel Parked in a Perpendicular World".

I remember not being able to retain all the information that was being given by the teachers, I'm not sure if it was because my mind wondered and I couldn't stay focused enough to pay attention because that still happens to me these days, so if I didn't get what was being taught from the very beginning I would start to fall behind more as the year went on because I could never catch up. The funny thing about this whole pattern which is what it became, is that nobody ever taught me the way I was able to learn like they do to children these days through special education services.

It is impressive to see how precise they are with every single child who doesn't fall within the average for learning. I would get sent bad report cards and corrected in front of all the students. The one thing I remember like it was yesterday is always choosing to sit all the way in the back of any class. I remember Alex and José Antonio on each side of me, we would tell jokes and laugh, pass little notes when we were not paying attention to the teacher. There were subjects I liked more than others like English, Music, Art, History, French, Geography, all those were good subjects for me. I was Never very good at Math or Physics!

Then once I finished my formal education, where I never really had to intermingle and blend with the Jewish community during the time when we were being formed in a way through our education and our beliefs, I began to resent and look at all the things I didn't like about my own community. I do remember when we made the decision to leave México behind and move to the United States,  I was happy to leave that community behind, to me they seemed superficial and money driven. Don't take me wrong I'm proud to be Jewish, but to me to be Jewish is just honoring something my Ancestors left me as Traditions. They give more meaning and enrichment to our lives.

With my children's education I wound up doing the same my parents did with me, only I sent them to the Public School in our neighborhood. School was blocks away from home but I still drove them every day and picked them up. We had this little routine going that we'd go across to a darling Deli to eat something or even just get Ice Cream.

I am very lucky in that both my children are very intelligent. My daughter however was the more focused of the two, my son just wanted to play. She'd turn in her homework well done and at the right time and he'd leave it to the very last moment and did just an ok job. I'm sure he could have been helped with today's special education because he is incredibly intelligent, math is a piece of cake for him, he does calculations in his mind that should be done with a calculator but the challenge that he has is his focus, his ability to remain focused for a prolonged periods of time. That's my challenge too so I understand it very well.

Nowadays they pay complete attention to each child and the moment they see there is something stopping them from learning at the same pace as the general student population their age they intervene and call for a meeting of all their teachers to discuss how they can help him/her learn better. Then there are the meetings with the parents of the child to present this program of special education, then if the parents don't speak English they have an interpreter who translates every word the panel is saying and back to the panel what the parent had to say in the form of a comment or a question.

They proceed to do a full evaluation of the student to find the areas of need, back again to the meetings and finally they implement the help in the areas of need.

To me this is very impressive because there are so many resources being used for each and every child in education these days, none of which was the case during my education or at a MUCH smaller scale during my own children's education and that's only 20 yrs. ago.

So it's clear that I have been witness to the many changes that education has experienced in the last 65 yrs. I've been on this earth. And I just covered the bare minimum changes otherwise I could talk about each thing and turn this into a book, but that wasn't my purpose for this entry. I just wanted to illustrate once more that us humans are constantly trying to improve the ways in which to thrive while we are alive, but if I take a peek inside and see the results of the changes vs the way education was given in my days I think I'd chose my days for various reasons.

For one students were a bit intimidated by our teachers. That little bit of intimidation however promoted Respect. I don't remember any of my school classmates ever disrespecting a teacher. If you did they'd send you to the principal right away and our principal, Professor Carrión, was this AMAZING! man from Spain. He was handsome with a deep voice and always a smile on his face. He was adored by everyone, we never wanted Professor Carrión to have to tell us that we were not behaving the way he expected us to behave.

Nowadays many kids do what they want like take out their cell phones in class to text or play games and the teacher has to call the parent to tell them to reprimand the child or else and has to give him a few warnings before he takes that phone away that shouldn't be brought to school to begin with. I took this photograph at my daughter's graduation from Northeastern University in Boston. I rest my case! I've been in school events where they give gifts to pre-school and kindergarten age parents to attend so they can teach them how to parent. They go through so many things that I consider to be common sense that it makes me wonder if we are not taking away their ability to use their own.

Many parents don't know how to handle their children, a lot more children are rebellious, there is more emphasis on special education for each child and perhaps in generations to come we will be able to tell if this was effective, but what I believe is there are too many rules, too much structure, too much focus on the weaknesses, too much one on one education. If I had gotten that type of structure during my education maybe I could have been better and many other things like Math, but I didn't have it and I made it anyways. Only I did by forcing myself to find the strength in my weaknesses and to take full advantage of my strengths.

I use math all the time and I know what I need to know to get by, I would be the worst accountant in the world because I don't like it but I'm considered to be very good at what I do like to do and that's all a human needs to live a fulfilled, happy, productive, creative life.

I think the less the structure the more you have to challenge yourself to learn what you love which in the end is really all you need to know.  I honestly could not tell you how many classes I've taken since I left my formal education so many years ago, anywhere from Photography, ceramics and hundreds of crafts to the Hebrew language that I wanted to learn so bad when I was a child and the reason I believe I was able to focus in what I was learning and not during my childhood education is because I was learning what I love doing.

I am successful at what I do and so are my children whom I gave all the freedom to chose what they wanted to do and how they wanted to learn. It was I the parent who made sure they do their homework and read, that they went to school on time and well dressed, that they were respectful and courteous, that they develop a charming caring personality and the results are there. Two productive caring very successful human beings.

Even how parents raise their children has changed from the totally uninvolved to the other extreme where in both of those cases ends up breaking a child's spirit. It's those who manage to maintain the balance that are more likely to see a better outcome in the lives of their children.

Now I Know my ABCs...

Hugs xoxo
@nit@

You Can Call Me Cashew...

I've been called crazy many times, most of them as jokes, "Oh Mom you're a nut" my daughter said jokingly once to which I remember replying "And proud of it my love" and being that Cashews are my FAVORITE type of nuts I added to that "You Can Call Me Cashew, I'm a Fine Nut!"
In fact ten years ago when I started writing this Blog I labeled the area where I describe a little bit about myself as "Call Me Cashew".

I just think I must be a Nut if I'm one of the few that can see the world as different as I do compared to the majority. Everybody can't be a nut so it must be me I thought.

I hear everyone saying that you need to be kind and loving, giving and caring, generous and encourage others. truthful to yourself and to others but if you tell somebody something they don't want to hear or are willing to consider you're probably out of their lives. If you do something for yourself they don't approve of you're out of their lives, if you are giving you are called weak and if you open yourself to receive you are called selfish, if you encourage others you must need something and if you ask for what you need most of the time you'll get denied.

Working in Education with about 15,000 students I've had the opportunity to get to know A LOT of the details that go on in people's lives. I also decided to be "Mary Poppins" this summer that school was out so that opened doors for me to see what goes behind closed doors. I didn't need to confirm that money has nothing to do with certain behaviors and although I'm very fortunate never to have been exposed to physical abuse first hand, there are a lot of well intended people in the world trying to raise the newer generations that in my perception will not get the results they expect.

It's easier to see other people's challenges when you are not emotionally involved or in need to make decisions, so I listen, I observe and somehow I can see what will happen. I've been lucky enough to see a lot of these children that I met once as infants now as adults and what I saw happening so many years back, happened.

I really don't mind being a Nut, I know I do things that others wouldn't consider but if I'm going to take the time to do any of them it will always be to stay balanced and in harmony with this life I'm living with Love and good intentions.

So feel free to "Call Me Cashew!"

Hugs xoxo
@nit@

Working With Not Against...

Many years ago right after my two children were born I noticed that I couldn't remember many things, particularly my short term memory was weak. I would place things and then forget where, go into a room and not remember what I was going to do there, I even started writing myself notes and would lose them. I got concerned because I could realize it was happening but I didn't know how to make it stop. I had two newborns less than a year apart, I was 38 years old and mostly responsible for their wellbeing. Their dad would go to work and come home too tired to spend much time with the babies who were usually asleep.

The drawing above is one I did trying to describe with a visual image of how my mind thinks. I decided to go get some help so I thought of a psychologist who deals with these types of challenges. He gave me a very long test that lasted for about 5 hours. It was torture because I had to focus and think through every question or task and maintain concentration for a very long period of time. I have always had a hard time doing only one thing for a long time, I have to be actively changing my activities so they don't become overwhelming. In other words I rather have changes than keep everything the same.

I don't remember exactly all the results of this test but I do remember two things the Doctor told me. One that my intelligence was above average and two that my ability to concentrate gets in the way of me wanting to follow through with a task and that when I adapted to this weakness or strength however you want to look at it, I force changed a part of me. That I had to learn how to take advantage of the way I process my information and act on it so that when I like something I keep the interest in it without feeling that I have to do it in a certain way or it won't work.

Apparently what this does is that say you want to be a sculptor and in your mind you already know what you want to sculpt and how it's going to look, but you sit down in front of that clay and you can't make it look the way you want to so you need to learn ways of how to do that. Someone who processes information the way I do, would KNOW that one day you're going to do that figure in your mind, but right at this moment you don't have what it takes to focus all your attention on learning how to do it, you want to do many things and jump from one to the other.

Now that I work in Education and mostly in Special Education I see the importance of knowing how everybody learns because we are all different. The resources available nowadays in the schools for children who need to be taught a different way are amazing and what these educators are doing is teaching each child the way the child can learn. I could have benefited from this type of education, but there wasn't anything like that in my days. I was just an average student who had mediocre grades and went to study a career that my dad chose for me so I could start working right away and he could stop having to support me.

I decided that if I couldn't stay with only one thing I would take advantage of the fact that I like changes and learn to do things the way it works for me. I'm always actively learning something, writing, doing a craft, working, learning a new language, teaching, anything but cooking, that's my husband's department ;)

I would say that in the past 10 years of my life I've learned much more doing it my way than I did the first 50 years trying to do it the way it works for most people. I'm just glad that I did something about it instead of resisting the way it works for me even at a more advanced age.

There's no denying "Parallel Parked in a Perpendicular World". 

Well it's time to get ready, " The Jungle Book" starts in less than an hour.

Shabbat Shalom everyone....

Hugs xoxo
@nit@

If G-d brings you to it......

I thought this was a nice story to share with you...it looks long to read, but it truly isn't...not to mention that it is well worth it!

I decided to give it a title since it didn't come with one, and I have no idea who wrote it, a good friend of mine from childhood sent it to me.

I'm just like Rose, I take classes every chance I get, travel as much as I can, anywhere, I'm fearless, daring and thrive on adventure, and if the opportunity arises, I'm there!

Hope you enjoy the story as much as I did, and remember to be like Rose, it's the only way to be!

Hugs,
@nit@
If G-d brings you to it, He will bring you through it!
(Thank you Rose!)

The first day of school our professor introduced himself and challenged us to get to know someone we didn't already know. I stood up to look around when a gentle hand touched my shoulder. I turned around to find a wrinkled, little old lady beaming up at me with a smile that lit up her entire being. She said, "Hi handsome. My name is Rose. I'm eighty-seven years old. Can I give you a hug?"

I laughed and enthusiastically responded, "Of course you may!" and she gave me a giant squeeze. "Why are you in college at such a young, innocent age?" I asked. She jokingly replied, "I'm here to meet a rich husband, get married, and have a couple of kids .." "No seriously," I asked. I was curious what may have motivated her to be taking on this challenge at her age.

"I always dreamed of having a college education and now I'm getting one!" she told me. After class we walked to the student union building and shared a chocolate milkshake. We became instant friends. Every day for the next three months we would leave class together and talk nonstop. I was always mesmerized listening to this "time machine" as she shared her wisdom and experience with me. Over the course of the year, Rose became a campus icon and she easily made friends wherever she went. She loved to dress up and she reveled in the attention bestowed upon her from the other students. She was living it up.

At the end of the semester we invited Rose to speak at our football banquet. I'll never forget what she taught us. She was introduced and stepped up to the podium. As she began to deliver her prepared speech, she dropped her three by five cards on the floor. Frustrated and a little embarrassed she leaned into the microphone and simply said, "I'm sorry I'm so jittery. I gave up beer for Lent and this whiskey is killing me! I'll never get my speech back in order so let me just tell you what I know.

" As we laughed she cleared her throat and began, "! We do not stop playing because we are old; we grow old because we stop playing. There are only four secrets to staying young, being happy, and achieving success. You have to laugh and find humor every day. You've got to have a dream. When you lose your dreams, you die. We have so many people walking around who are dead and don't even know it!

There is a huge difference between growing older and growing up. If you are nineteen years old and lie in bed for one full year and don't do one productive thing, you will turn twenty years old.

If I am eighty-seven years old and stay in bed for a year and never do anything I will turn eighty-eight. Anybody can grow older. That doesn't take any talent or ability. The idea is to grow up by always finding opportunity in change. Have no regrets. The elderly usually don't have regrets for what we did, but rather for things we did not do. The only people who fear death are those with regrets." She concluded her speech by courageously singing "The Rose."
She challenged each of us to study the lyrics and live them out in our daily lives. At the year's end Rose finished the college degree she had begun all those years ago.
One week after graduation Rose died peacefully in her sleep. Over two thousand college students attended her funeral in tribute to the wonderful woman who taught by example that it's never too late to be all you can possibly be.

REMEMBER, GROWING OLDER IS MANDATORY. GROWING UP IS OPTIONAL. We make a Living by what we get, We make a Life by what we give. G-d promises a safe landing, not a calm passage. If G-d brings you to it, He will bring you through it.

--- We are all like one-winged angels. It is only when we help each other that we can fly.

--Luciano de Crescenzo