{"id":19705,"date":"2018-04-23T15:27:59","date_gmt":"2018-04-23T19:27:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/strobeleducation.com\/?p=19705"},"modified":"2023-08-03T19:37:35","modified_gmt":"2023-08-03T19:37:35","slug":"hope-in-our-classrooms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/strobeleducation.com\/blog\/hope-in-our-classrooms\/","title":{"rendered":"Choosing Hope in the Classroom"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why the Choices Teachers Make Matter<\/h2>\n

As most of you know, I\u2019m an avid runner\u2014and an avid reader. So, one of my favorite recent discoveries is the Audible app. It allows me to download books and listen to them while I run. Of course, I\u2019m a teacher and love to highlight, mark up text, and draw asterisks in \u201creal\u201d books \u2026 so, listening to audiobooks was a bit of an adjustment. But the convenience is great, and I\u2019ve found that sometimes <\/span>hearing<\/span><\/i> the story\u2014especially when it’s about a topic like HOPE\u2014is almost more impactful.<\/span><\/p>\n

That was certainly the case as I listened to the book, <\/span>Choosing Hope: Moving Forward from Life\u2019s Darkest Hours<\/span><\/i><\/a>, by Kaitlin Roig-Debellis. You might remember Mrs. Roig-Debellis as the Sandy Hook Elementary teacher who saved her entire first grade class when a gunman broke into the school and killed 20 children and six adults.<\/span><\/p>\n

I was nearly stopped in my tracks as I listed to her tell the bone-chilling story of hearing the gunshots and shattering glass. She tells of immediately hopping up from circle time with her students to shut the door and turn out the lights. Unfortunately, she\u2019d forgotten to grab her keys and realized she didn\u2019t have time to go back for them and lock the door. So, she gathered all 15 of her students into the single-occupancy bathroom attached to the classroom.<\/span><\/p>\n

Moments later, the gunman opened her classroom door. Mrs. Roig-Debellis believes that because he saw it was dark and empty, he chose to move on.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was powerful hearing this. As a teacher and lover of children, I can\u2019t imagine the amount of hatred it required to perpetrate such a heinous crime. And I can\u2019t imagine the strength it required for the teachers, the students, their families to endure such unbearable pain.<\/span><\/p>\n

Equally powerful is hearing Mrs. Roig-Debellis say that, after everything, she still chooses HOPE. She chooses to share her experience with the world because she wants to find meaning and purpose in this tragic event.<\/span><\/p>\n

See, we all have a CHOICE in how we deal with the circumstances<\/a> in our life. We can choose to live in darkness, or we can focus on hope for the future.<\/span><\/p>\n

Being a teacher in today\u2019s world can be fraught with difficulties. It can leave you feeling powerless. But Mrs. Roig-Debellis\u2019 story is one that every teacher should embrace. <\/span><\/p>\n

We have a choice every single time we step into our classrooms. I say we stand together, and choose hope.<\/span><\/p>\n

Choose hope \u2026 for our students, for our schools, for ourselves.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why the Choices Teachers Make Matter As most of you know, I\u2019m an avid runner\u2014and an avid reader. So, one of my favorite recent discoveries is the Audible app. It allows me to download books and listen to them while I run. Of course, I\u2019m a teacher and love to highlight, mark up text, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":19706,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reinventing-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/strobeleducation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/strobeleducation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/strobeleducation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strobeleducation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strobeleducation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/strobeleducation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strobeleducation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/strobeleducation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strobeleducation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strobeleducation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}