Elena Aguilar Quotes

Remember: It's not your fault that things are the way they are, but it is your responsibility to do something about them.

Everyone we work with knows a lot more and can do a lot more than we think. It's our job as coaches to find out what it is that they know, care about, can do, and are committed to, and then to use that information to help them move their practice.

teachers need close ​to fifty hours of PD in a given area to improve their skills and their students' learning

If I envision a just, fair future, I must behave justly and fairly today.

In the majority of schools, what's needed isn't more professional development on deconstructing standards or academic discourse or using data to drive instruction. What's needed is time, space, and attention to managing stress and cultivating resilience.

Malcolm Gladwell, the author of Outliers: The Story of Success (2008), calculates that it takes ten thousand hours of deliberate practice—practice that promotes continuous improvement—to master a complex skill. This translates into about seven years for those working in schools.

Tell stories to help others understand your beliefs and opinions. Offer your stories, not in the hope that they will change anyone else, but because they are your stories to tell and they deserve to live outside you. And when you are a listener, allow the stories of others to change you.

Most transformation programs satisfy themselves with shifting the same old furniture about in the same old room. But real transformation requires that we redesign the room itself. Perhaps even blow up the old room. It requires that we change the thinking behind our thinking. Danah Zohar (1997, p. 243)

You can strive to make every conversation one that dismantles white supremacy and systems of oppression. Every conversation can contribute to building a more just and equitable world, a world in which every person's full humanity is centered and seen, a world in which conversations are bridges to connection and healing.

The coach's job is to help the client get out of the habit of putting out fires and instead to invest time and energy into installing automatic sprinkler systems and removing fuel and sources of ignition” (Bloom, Castagna, Warren, and Moir, 2005, p. 106). To coach for system change, we must start by cataloguing the fires.

We are our stories, stories that can be both prison and the crowbar to break open the door of that prison; we make stories to save ourselves or to trap ourselves or others, stories that lift us up or smash us against the stone wall of our own limits and fears. Liberation is always in part a storytelling process: breaking stories, breaking silences, making new stories. A free person tells her own story. A valued person lives in a society in which her story has a place. Rebecca Solnit

Here's the thing about beliefs; we all have them and they drive our actions. We experience our beliefs as truths, and we can usually find evidence to support them. Subsequently, they create boundaries around what we think we can and can't do, what can and can't be done in the world. Some of our beliefs are tucked into our subconscious, where they operate without our awareness. Sometimes our beliefs contradict each other or our core values. Some of our beliefs make us strong, powerful people; some do not serve us. The good news is that beliefs can be updated or changed.

There is no moment more important for educators to attend to than this one between stimulus and response. If we slow down and examine these moments, if we cultivate new responses, we might just transform our schools into places where we all thrive.

In order to rebound when you're down and struggling, you need to know that the emotions you're experiencing are temporary. This belief helps you get back up because you recognize that you're in charge of the cycle of the emotion. You don't need to wait for someone to pick you up or for something in your external world to change; the way to get back up has to do with how you think about what's going on. It has to do with your knowledge about where you can intervene in an emotion cycle and what tools you have available to do so.

If you are an introverted teacher, be especially diligent in finding times to recharge.

Burnout isn't permanent. Some people can recover and remain in their positions, whereas others may choose to explore alternate positions in the field.

Emotions come in waves and degrees of intensity. Frustration is a shade of anger, feeling competitive is a degree of jealousy, and relief is related to happiness.

There's a difference between anger and aggression. Anger is an energy that becomes aggression when it manifests as an action or a set of thoughts. Aggression is throwing a plate across the room, belittling someone, shutting down and not speaking, complaining relentlessly, or being hypercritical, resentful, or bitter. Aggression is a maladaptive response to suffering, and that response—not the anger—is the problem.

Gratitude is like a flashlight. It lights up what is already there. You don't necessarily have anything more or different, but suddenly you can actually see what it is. And because you can see, you no longer take it for granted. M. J. Ryan

Cultural competence is the ability to understand, appreciate, and interact with people from cultures or belief systems different from one's own; it is the ability to navigate cross-cultural differences in order to do something—be that teach students, collaborate with colleagues, or socialize with friends.

We can chart our future clearly and wisely only when we know the path which has led to the present. Adlai E. Stevenson (1952)

The art of coaching is doing, thinking, and being: doing a set of actions, holding a set of beliefs, and being in a way that results in those actions leading to change.

Curriculum must be improved in order to meet the needs of all our students. Our schools cannot continue to exist or be treated as isolated entities in a community—those of us working with and in schools must support them to become more tightly connected to, in service of, and responsive to the communities in which they are located.

those of us who intend to practice it as a vehicle for transformation must be responsible for presenting a clear definition of what it is, who we are, what we do, and why we do it.

Coaching is a form of professional development that brings out the best in people, uncovers strengths and skills, builds effective teams, cultivates compassion, and builds emotionally resilient educators. Coaching at its essence is the way that human beings, and individuals, have always learned best.

Daniel Coyle, author of The Talent Code (2009), describes coaches as farmers who cultivate talent in others.

a coach helps build the capacity of others by facilitating their learning.

We need to interrupt any stories that are not in alignment with what we're doing.

Coaching is the art of creating an environment, through conversation and a way of being, that facilitates the process by which a person can move toward desired goals in a fulfilling manner. Tim Gallwey (2000, p. 177)

The art of coaching is doing, thinking, and being: doing a set of actions, holding a set of beliefs, and being in a way that results in those actions leading to change. These are the three things that can make coaching transformational.

It's hard to work in schools these days without recognizing the patterns in outcomes that correlate to socioeconomic factors and reflect broader patterns of achievement and power.

Without courage we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest. —Maya Angelou

Fue entonces que me di cuenta de que el problema no era hablar dos lenguas, sino cuáles eran esas lenguas.

...en la lengua quechua, al igual que en aymara, las metáforas del tiempo son distintas: el pasado, que ya conocemos, está delante de nosotros, frente a nuestros ojos, mientras que el futuro, incierto, queda atrás, a nuestras espaldas, no podemos verlo

Resistir implica la existencia de una agresión, resistir desgasta

I want to ask you, as clearly as I can, to bear with patience with all that is unresolved in your heart, and to try to love the questions themselves … Don't dig for answers that can't be given you yet: you cannot live them now. For everything must be lived. Live the questions now, then perhaps then, someday, you will gradually, without noticing, live into the answer. —RAINER MARIA RILKE

What you think is how you feel. Our interpretations can cause, exacerbate, or intensify emotional distress, or they can boost our optimism, help us connect with others, and enable us to care for ourselves and to engage in the many habits that boost resilience. It's your interpretation that produces an emotion; improve your interpretations and you may feel better.

Setting an intention gives you an opportunity to declare how you want to be in a situation—and, ultimately, that's all you have true control over. How you show up. How you experience something. This is one of the most powerful routines you can integrate into your daily life. I can almost guarantee that if you try it every day for a month, you'll feel very different, perhaps even transformed.

Eventually, we'll get to conversations about the kind of love that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. insisted we embody, the kind of love that saints and Buddhas challenge us to demonstrate unflinchingly. What would it look like to practice this kind of love at school? What would it take for us to engage in our teaching, leadership, and coaching from a place of unconditional love?

If you want to change your life, you've got to deal with your thoughts.

Vulnerability is a path toward wholeness and connection. At the same time, you can be thoughtful about sharing your stories. You don't have to plunge headfirst into the deep end of the pool. Practice managing your discomfort as you push the edges of your vulnerability with yourself and with others. Push gently out of your comfort zone. You're stronger than you think.

In recent years, social, political, and economic divisions in the United States, and elsewhere, have become even more glaringly apparent. We see where people can't listen to each other, haven't built the skill and ability to learn from each other, lack empathy for each other, and are failing to achieve their goals and visions for peace. And yet, there are many who believe, myself included, that the desire for connection, freedom, and healing is stronger than the desire to hurt, dominate, and oppress.

Resources are limited in many schools--however, if we prioritize dismantling systemic oppression, if we prioritize the needs of our most marginalized students, we can find the time, support, money, and resources that we need.

Why can't there be more white people coaching each other on their racism?