We are defined not only by what we do, day to day, but also by how we react and utilize our seemingly random hand of cards in life.  I’ve found over 33 years of life, the mark of character that differentiates those who excel and succeed from those who do not is resilience.  I can point to former students as examples:  The college graduate who grew up with an absent mother and a drug addicted father? Resilience.  The home-care nurse whose parents didn’t value an education past high school?  Resilience.  The successful plumber whose best friend committed suicide his sophomore year of high school?  Resilience.

It seems fitting to give a Webster’s definition of resilience here, however, I think that we all can picture individuals who personify our meaning of the word.   For me, above all, those people are my brother, Matthew, and my sister-in-law Danielle.   This story isn’t about me, or my reaction to this event.  It’s about them and what they have taught the world about resilience and the power of hope.  I hope my intentions come across as I recap their story.

One year ago, January 30th, 2013, Danielle, while finishing up a nursing clinical suffered a massive hemorrhage resulting from a burst aneurysm on the right side of her brain.  She was rushed to the local hospital where she was taken into surgery and given a very bleak prognosis.  The sobbing ER doctor explained to my brother that his wife was probably going to die.  My younger brother, who I’d always joked as being “30 going on 19” now was faced with an incomprehensible, life-altering situation.  He captures his emotion poignantly on a Caring Bridge post about the account of the moment when he told that doctor, as well as the hospital chaplain to F-ing get his wife to Iowa City!  I think those words have defined his attitude on the situation that it does not matter what has plagued us in the past.  He knew she had much more to give this world, so let’s get out of her way so she can fight to give it.

Reflecting during anniversaries of events seems to be a cultural norm and a time to remind ourselves of where we came from and how much further we have to go. A year ago today, we watched in udder horror and shock as Danielle lay motionless, lifeless, with small tubes ushering blood from her brain.  Furthermore, we observed silently as every half an hour, a nurse would shine a light in her eyes and ask for a reaction that never came.  “No change,” became the most chilling words I’ve ever heard.  I didn’t say it at the time, but I went to bed that night believing our precious Danielle was most likely gone.

The next day brought new light, and a miracle.  The overnight nurse said she had never seen anything like it.  When prompted to wiggle her toes, Danielle obliged.  “Thumbs up if you hear me, Danielle?”  And it was the most beautiful thumb I’ve ever seen.  She began her recovery that day and has not stopped since.  In one year, Danielle has gone from “probably going to die” to thriving and living.  Her personality, again, lights up the room as it always had.  She walks with less and less assistance each day and remains poised and confident that she will walk in the Bix 7 this summer.  Every day my brother is there by her side, emotionally and physically.  From the hospital ICU to a rehabilitation center in Ankeny, Iowa.  And now back home, where he’d turn their house upside down if he had to in order to ensure her comfort.

One of Danielle’s doctors said, “When you’ve seen one brain injury, you’ve seen…one brain injury.”  I believe these words are not necessarily a testament to the brain alone but the person in control of it.  Danielle proved that her fate was not finalized and her husband stood by her side believing the same.  These two incredible people inspire me every day to be a better person and to remember that all people fight a battle, in their bodies and their minds.  And I am so thankful for their presence in my life, and the opportunity to learn from them.

Danielle with my daughter, Maria this Christmas.

“Sharing is caring” does have a nice rhymey ring to it. Although lately, I’ve felt a little bit like my version comes off as ‘sharing is pushing and over-feeding’.  I’ve had teachers in my department inquire about problem solving and desire to get kids to invest and engage.  I like sharing what I’ve discovered and what I have found that works, but sometimes I get so excited about sharing resources that I end up like Tommy Boy and his pretty new pet.  I sometimes fail to realize that trying new approaches can be uncomfortable, unpredictable and downright scary and not all teachers want to dive into the change head first as I did.

Here’s a great example: we had final exams in 2-hour blocks right before Thanksgiving break.  To say that the kids get “restless” by the middle of the second day is sugar-coating it.  A new teacher in our department, (let’s call her Sheryl) sent this picture with the caption, “My algebra kids were bored after their final and built this with their textbooks.” 

Of course, my brain couldn’t just let that one go and say, “Nice book tower, Sheryl.” Dan Meyer calls this perplexity and modeling this behavior is a key to getting students curious. Instead, my eyes lit up and I thought, “what a great math problem!”  As we looked at this photo, I said, “what do you think kids will notice and wonder about this photo? Do you think you could get them to come up with how many books are in the 10th row or the nth row?”  Of course the question that’s raised, legitimately, is “what do you do when students say ‘there are green books and red books’ or ‘some are faced forward and some are faced backward’?”  This is the part that I believe is scary for a lot of teachers is relinquishing control of the immediate direction of the lesson and not being so certain about how students will respond.  At least when we give them a quadratic to factor, we have a pretty good idea of the limited number of directions they can move to arrive at a singular correct answer.

But what I believe is imperative here is validating and acknowledging those seemingly math-less observations and creating a math opportunity with it.  With the instance of “some are red and some are green,” we can now extend that declaration of color to ideas like percentages, ratios, and so forth.  But by first validating this red/green response, we’ve invited this student to the conversation and made them part of the creation of the problem we are about to solve.  Now they are empowered by the process and more motivated to step in to the problem-solving ring.  Whereas before, this same student might have disengaged completely.

A recent example of this from my own classroom:  We were beginning Dan Meyer’s 3-act task using the Penny Pyramid.  When collecting wonderings, one student asked how many 1996 pennies were in the pyramid. He was born in 1996, and was probably just fascinated by that year, but I didn’t want to dismiss that from the discussion.  I have a bucket of pennies in my room that I use occasionally for probability experiments, and I hoped that this kid could draw from his knowledge about samples to make a reasonable estimation of how many 1996 pennies were in that pyramid.  As it turns out, that students off-hand question turned into a great math discussion about random sampling.

But back to this book tower:  After I’m sure that I’ve thoroughly freaked out this new teacher with my enthusiasm over a book tower, something awesome happens.  This new teacher, races into my room after 1st period on Monday and says, “I did it!  I did the book tower, and it was AWESOME!”  I’ve had some great moments with other teachers, but that one is going to rank pretty high on my list for a long time. At lunch, she was STILL raving about it. She even said that the students were so engaged, that they ran out of time talking about it during class. Maybe there’s hope for Tommy Boy after all.