Present.

Tonight signifies the end of my two-year master's program. After several days of listening to students do their presentations of learning, I got to do mine. I felt very happy for all the people who were there to witness: my CFF, Loni Philbrick-Linzmeyer; my advisor, Rob Riordan; my teaching partner and friend, Patrick Yurick; my graduate school director, Stacey Callier; and my most cherished professor from SDSU, Grant Nebel.

I've been preparing thoughts for this for a long time. Whenever I get to present my learning, I take it very seriously (a curse, I suppose, from my debate days). I gathered my thoughts and summarized all learning from my teacher leadership program into a single concept, and only five words:

Don't make changes. Be change.

It's funny how the pendulum has swung, and where I am now, and where I began. I always thought my journey in education would be about monumental changes and reforms. I guess it still is... it's just that I see them as being immensely personal. Anzueth's journey is monumental. So was Drew's, and Jaime's, and Beny's. Their stories are full of the stuff of sagas. As Grant said tonight, I am a griot, a keeper of other people's stories. That was something that brought me to teaching. My life is full of other people. I sometimes don't know where they begin and I end.

It makes me always feel full, like a love poem.

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it