teach. pray. - Elizabeth Gilbert's Creativity Workshop: Curiosity Cat Scan

Last week, I signed up for Liz Gilbert's Creativity Workshop. Each section of the workshop assigns different writing tasks. The objective of the course is to guide the student toward their own creativity and the courage to act on it. Students are encouraged to share links to their writing on Padlet. As I was scanning padlet earlier today, I saw hundreds of participants from all over the world. It was inspiring to see so many people searching for their own way to express their own creativity. It was uplifting to see I am not alone in this lust for living creatively and meaningfully. 

I labeled this post with teach, because I believe being a teacher (and human) that my learning should never stop. The more I learn the more knowledge I have to share not only with my students but to others in all crannies of life. I labeled it pray, because I've been praying for the courage to chase my dreams and dance with them. 

After much debate with myself, I decided I would post each assignment to my blog. The first one is called Curiosity Cat Scan. We were given several questions to choose from and to write on for 20 minutes. Enjoy.

What would you do for a living if you were not afraid of anything?

If I weren’t afraid of anything, I’d be a travelling philanthropist and storyteller. There is nothing that I love more than helping others, travelling and meeting new people and experiencing new cultures, and sharing my own experiences hoping they can be of comfort, guidance, or new found knowledge for someone else. What I’ve learned over my short life and in my few travels is this, “All the freaky people make the beauty in the world,” so says Michael Franti.

Currently, I’m an elementary special education teacher. I’ve been on the fence about it for a couple years. I love teaching young people vital life skills like reading, writing, math, social skills. It’s extremely rewarding and allows me to be creative within certain parameters. But, I’m burning out and each year I feel the fire fizzle out a little more. For the past two years, I’ve been too afraid to expand my horizons. I can’t stop thinking, “There is nothing else I’d be this good at.” But, deep inside me is a burning desire to step outside of the box I’ve put myself into. Deep inside me, I know I can make a difference in people’s live, in young people’s lives, outside of the classroom.

I love going on “vacations” and coming back to the classroom and showing pictures to my students and telling them all the stories I heard from strangers and all the new knowledge I found. I love telling them my new stories. My stories, both travelling and life experience stories, connect me to my students and really every human being I meet and have contact with. At some point, my story is their story too. And, I love discovering where my story meets their story.

Writing has been a passion of mine since childhood. It has been a release and therapy for me. For years, I let go of it. Recently, I discovered I needed it again. It helps me process my thoughts and feelings. It helps me communicate more eloquently and say the things I wish I had said in conversation.

If I weren’t afraid of anything, I would combine these things, writing, travelling, and philanthropy, and share them with as many people as possible, whether through a blog (which I’ve started, and I love it) or through children’s books. Children’s books really lack in the genre of character education, especially at the middle school and high school level when kids are trying to find themselves and trying to discover who they are. If they only knew how much we all struggle, even in adulthood.