Welcome to 2021: Let's Go!

Welcome to 2021!

I know, I know...I'm a few days late. But here we are. It feels like everyone I know has taken a collective sigh of relief that the madness of 2020 is now in the rearview mirror. Really, though, how different has the new year been from the old? I'm not sure there is something magical in closing the old calendar and opening up a new one. And yet, I find myself feeling hopeful for the new year, perhaps more hopeful than I've felt in sometime.

This past year I continued my practice of capturing one second of video every day using the 1 Second Everyday app. I smashed all of those seconds together again into a six and a half minute video recap of my year. As I watched it, I'm struck by how clearly I can remember so many of these one-second slices of life, both the highs and the lows. You're welcome to watch it here, if you like:

That last second of my 2020 is my niece leaping off of a chair in our living room. Her shout got cut off just a bit to squeeze the whole leap into one second. It was actually a, "Let's go!" And I can't think of a more fitting way to think about leaping into the new year: "Let's go!"

This is often the time of year where I--like many people--reflect on setting goals for myself. There is something about the milestone of the new year beginning that makes this seem right. Last year, about this time, I wrote a post wondering about the value of "resolutions" and whether goals need to be measurable to be attainable. I'm still wondering about this, I guess. I'm not really making any resolutions this year, and I'm not sure I'll set any measurable goals either.

Oh, yes...I could stand to lose a bunch of the pounds I packed on through stress-eating my way through 2020. And, yes...I'm planning to be out pedaling as soon as the snow and ice are done for this winter...and I'll probably shoot for 2000 miles on my bike again, since that has been about what I've been pedaling for the past couple of years. And I do intend to keep up the blogging, at least a few times each month. And, gratefully, I'm getting more intentional about spending time in prayer and reading scripture again, with the support of a new devotional I got for Christmas. And professionally, I have broad ambitions of both starting a podcast with a colleague this year, and drafting a book, as well as teaching to the best of my ability in our ongoing pandemic world.

That looks like a lot of goal-setting, doesn't it?

But I think my actual "goal" for 2021 is to be fully present in the things I'm doing. I want to take a cue from my niece's joy in jumping in with both feet, with a "Let's Go!" attitude.

Welcome to 2021, friends. Let's do this!

"Let's Go!"

Teaching in 2020

I want to make some kind of 20/20 vision joke as I start this post, but nothing is coming to me. I am a little overwhelmed with how this school year has started.

It's year 23 for me as a teacher, and year 9 for me at Dordt. I still love this work immensely. I still am learning all the time about how to do this work. I still am my own worst critic too--in my heart of hearts, I know that I'm fulfilling my calling in what I'm doing here, and yet, I see all my errors and missteps and agonize about these.

This feels like a confessional, so I'll keep going in that vein: I think that this has been the most ambivalent beginning of a school year for me in my years of teaching to date. Don't hear this wrong: I am THRILLED to be here, and ELATED to have students on campus again! That part has been so, so wonderful. I have thoroughly enjoyed meeting up with my new students, and reconnecting with students I've taught before. I don't have any brand new courses this year, so it's a year of revising, and refining, and a little re-imagining. And it's all off to a great start, honestly.

But...

On the other hand, teaching in the Age of COVID-19 is perhaps the most demanding thing I've done since those first years of bumbling through, when I learned something new about this arcane craft every day. Teaching in a mask or face shield ain't all it's cracked up to be. Teaching in two modes simultaneously (with some students in our face-to-face classroom and some joining in via Zoom) has an incredible cognitive demand. I am so grateful that I was scheduled to teach two of my courses online this term, because I have those ones more-or-less dialed in at this point, which frees up some more of my cognitive energy to focus on reinventing how I will connect with my students in my "face-to-face" courses. (Which are now hybrid format.)

It's not that I feel like a first year teacher again...but it is definitely a feeling of "unsettled" that I don't think I've felt since that first year.

And so I am calling this an "ambivalent beginning." The elation of being able to meet up with students again that I usually feel at the beginning of every school year is being tempered by anxiety about the unknowns and the ongoing extra work of retooling my teaching on the fly. And teaching with a mask and/or face shield, or hiding behind plexiglass at the podium? This is really cramping my style!

All of that said, I'm reflecting on the lesson I taught on day one of Introduction to Education, a lesson I revised a bit from the way I've taught it in the past to accommodate having students Zooming in, and teaching with my PPE in place. But the heart of the lesson was unchanged. Lesson 1 in Intro to Ed is this: "You Teach Who You Are."

Begging the question...who am I as a teacher? 

Does the mask, and face shield, and Zoom-split cognition, and weirdness of having students sitting six feet apart in our classroom define who I am as a teacher?

Not in the least.

This is a season of struggle for me, one that I hope to not repeat anytime soon. But I'm tapping into my creativity, my resilience, my flexibility, my empathy, my professionalism, my resourcefulness, my passion--all those dispositions that I hope to be fostering in my students--and I'm going to serve my students to the best of my ability, with all the care, and compassion, and responsiveness I can muster.

Resolutions, Goal-Setting, and Making a Difference

It's 2020.

I just can't get over the fact that it is 2020.

Wasn't it just 2008 like 6 months ago? The 90s feels like just a few years ago. 2020 is supposed to be "the future" or something, isn't it?

And yet, here we are.

We had a quiet New Year's Eve celebration last night: just my immediate family. We had fondue for supper, played table games, and listened to 80s hits. We didn't even watch New Year's Rockin' Eve or anything; we just spent time together. It was pretty great, honestly.

During supper, we talked about New Year's Resolutions--I asked everyone if they had any resolutions for 2020. My daughter responded with wisdom she had seen on Instagram: "There are two kinds of people in the world: people who don't make resolutions, and people who break resolutions." I was a little surprised by this cynicism, but I get where she's coming from...people do often break their resolutions, and often soon after they are made. I've been there too, honestly. I shared a few examples of resolutions I made that actually stuck, like the year I resolved to lose 30 pounds (which actually took me about 18 months, but I did it) and the year I resolved to read the whole Bible in a year (which I actually did, using a chronological Bible.) But I get where she is coming from. And, when I'm really honest, these are exceptions for me rather than the rule. I'm likely to not follow through on my so-called resolutions either.

Beginning Again

Man, you guys...I just love to teach!

I mean, it's terrifying, you know? Stepping into the classroom at the beginning of the year, ready to meet new students, and sort of hoping that everything doesn't come crashing apart in the first 10 minutes, but then you meet the students and find out how great they really are, and find your groove, and launch in to the new school year...

I love this work so much.

It's the first day of the new semester, the new academic year. This is my 22nd year as a professional educator, and my 8th year teaching in higher edu. That's crazy to me! It went so fast.

Right before Intro to Ed this morning, I tweeted...

First day of my 22nd year of teaching. Let’s see if I remember how to do this...bring on the learning! 😃 pic.twitter.com/QmsJDfclbz

— Dave Mulder (@d_mulder) August 27, 2019

I remembered how to do this. It was a good first day of class.

I love beginnings. I love the rhythm of the school year. I love that we get to start fresh every year. I love the newness of it all: new students, new schedules, new takes on the things I've done before.

Here's to beginning again!

Image via Pixabay [used with permission]

Beginning Again, with Trembling

I've shared before on this blog how much I love the rhythms of the academic year, with beginnings, middles, and ends. We are at the middle of the 2018-19 academic year right now...which means a new beginning as well. Today is the first day of the Spring semester here at Dordt--the last semester of "Dordt College" as we will become "Dordt University" as of May 13 of this year.

I love new beginnings. They also scare me a bit, as I confessed to my students in Introduction to Education this morning. I'm always anxious about meeting up with new students, but in a positive way--I think--if that makes any sense at all? The newness is so full of possibility, of promise. And I'm anxious that I might screw it up somehow, I guess.