Weekly Wide-Awake: Excellence At This Time

[The Stage is on Fire] is a page-turner in which, much like life, there are no easy answers and yet each step of the journey yields insight and hope. This work of heart must not be missed!

Melanie Faith

Creative Writing Teacher, Essayist & Poet.

Katie Steedly’s first-person piece [The Unspeakable Gift] is a riveting retelling of her participation in a National Institutes of Health study that aided her quest to come to grips with her life of living with a rare genetic disorder. Her writing is superb.

The Society of Professional Journalists

In recognition of receiving the Dateline Award for the Washingtonian Magazine essay, The Unspeakable Gift.

I thank you … It is the authenticity of your “class notes”; and it is the delicacy and skill with which you present the nuances of classroom life and the actuality of your students’ and fellow teachers’ lives.

Maxine Greene

Philosopher and Education Scholar

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Weekly Wide-Awake: Excellence At This Time

That I could be this excellence at this time/ sudden, changed, peaceful, & woke.
May Yang

What if we are all excellent? What if we all are gold medalists in our day-to-day? What if we are ferocious dreamers, sublime imaginators, divine conjurors, magnificent builders, lyrical composers, woke citizens, or peaceful warriors on a path toward the miraculous.

What if our capacity for the as if allows us to create the not yet. Let me explain. I have been working on this idea a long time. We nurture vision, clarity, and hope. We put teeth in the mouth of experience so that we can chew and digest and gain sustenance from our minutes and days. What if the real power of the Olympics, or any time excellence is on display, is that we watch and learn and come out changed, even just a bit. What if by showing us a tangible, beautiful, magical, aspirational as if, the very substance of our not yet explodes with a rousing, “Hell, Yes!”

Twenty one years ago this week, I successfully defended my doctoral dissertation. I had written about wide-awakeness in high school drama classrooms. (There probably is a connection between wide-awakeness and excellence? The work continues, I suppose.) Successfully defending my dissertation was a brush with excellence. I mention it now because in the twenty one years since I have learned that excellence is soil in which seeds of doubt and fear and anger can not grow. I have learned that excellence — even excellence attributed to one author — happens in community, as a result of more loving care than can ever be fully explained. I have learned that excellence defies failure, diagnoses, fatigue, and shame. I know for sure that excellence is a door open to anyone willing to open it. Not a boot straps, born on third base, ignoring privilege kind of door, but that kind of door that invites and says, “You were made for this. At this very moment.” That is the kind excellence that is bigger than a gold medal or doctoral degree. That is excellence written on the pages of every morning and decision and breath. That is excellence that is the result of paying attention. That is excellence that connects and expands and shares.

What I am Learning

To All My Friends

That I could be this human at this time/ breathing, looking, seeing, smelling/ That I could be this moment at this time/ resting, calmly moving, feeling/ That I could be this excellence at this time/ sudden, changed, peaceful, & woke — May Yang

I am thankful for many things. I am thankful to be alive. I am thankful for excellence and change. I am thankful for perfect time and miracles. I am thankful for joy and wonder. I am thankful for curiosity and kindness. I am thankful for words and story. I am thankful for stars and scar tissue. I am thankful for stained glass and puzzles. I am thankful for morning and night. I am thankful that things fall gently. I am thankful that we choose connection. I am thankful that we choose health. I am thankful we choose magic. I am thankful that we choose love. I am thankful we learn and repair and heal.

What Use Is Knowing Anything If No One Is Around

The dream, then: to erupt/ into a sturdier form, like a wild lotus bursting into// its tantrum of blades. — Kaveh Akbar

What if tantrums are songs that raise our truths, our multitudes, our heart’s desires? What if annihilation makes us buoyant and elastic and soft? What if, the more we know, the more we know we don’t know? What if the dream is beginner’s mind that is imaginative, curious, and creative?

tiny beautiful things

The future has an ancient heart. – Carlo Levi

Cheryl Strayed’s tiny beautiful things: Advice on love and life from Dear Sugar fell into my hands at a bookstore years ago. I had just moved to a different part of the country. I knew no one. I had left my job. Boxes were piled in our apartment, and I wanted books. I wanted friends, and books have always been friends. tiny beautiful things appeared.