Onward Elena Aguilar Quotes

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.

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.

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

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.

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.