​There are things I don’t say often because, well… once they’re said out loud, I worry that they sound ungrateful.
Tonight, like many nights lately, I hurt. A lot.
And on nights like this, I don’t particularly want to look for the silver lining. I don’t want to remind myself about all the things I’m still able to do, I don’t want to compare my pain and struggles to somebody else’s, and I don’t want to remind myself of how lucky I am. I know I am. And I’m grateful for my life. For the people in it. For the work I get to do. For the things that my body is still able to accomplish. And for probably a hundred other things I don’t stop to appreciate nearly enough.
But sometimes… I also hate this.
I hate hurting. I hate having to calculate whether something is worth what it might cost me physically later. I hate that there are days when getting through something perfectly normal feels like negotiating with a body that has already decided it doesn’t want to cooperate. And sometimes… I wish I didn’t have to adapt quite so much.
The thing I have to remind myself on nights like tonight is that all of that hurt and frustration doesn’t erase the gratitude.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I think I have a strange tendency to believe that gratitude automatically requires me to be happy with everything. That acknowledging something difficult somehow means I’ve stopped appreciating all the good things around me. But those things aren’t mutually exclusive. I can be thankful for what my body does carry me through and still be frustrated with the ways it fails me. I can love the life I’ve built and admit that some parts of living it are really, really hard.
I don’t know that I have a neat, tidy lesson to share this week. Maybe tonight I just needed to admit that I’m tired of hurting without feeling like I have to follow it up with a list of reasons I should still be thankful. Because I am thankful. Even tonight.
And maybe someone else needs to hear that, too. Whether it’s health, work, relationships, or something else entirely, I think we’re allowed to acknowledge the parts of our lives that are difficult without feeling guilty for doing so.
We can be grateful for a life that isn’t always easy to live.

Each month at school, we focus on a specific “Character Trait” and make a deliberate effort to recognize it in our students. They range from creativity and courage to responsibility and integrity, and as we move through them I’ve started to realize just how easy most of them are to lay claim to when they’re only words. It’s easy to say we value honesty, responsibility, courage, or integrity. The harder part comes when actually living by those things creates conflict, discomfort, inconvenience, or consequences. Integrity has always been one of my favorite traits to talk about with students and one of my favorites to watch for, but I’m also realizing it might be one of the most expensive traits to actually practice, usually at exactly the moment it matters most.
The thing about integrity is that there’s a difference between believing something matters and actually being willing to stick to it when doing so gets uncomfortable. Somewhere in that difference is conviction. Conviction can mean having a conversation you’d really rather not have, saying no when yes would make things considerably easier, refusing to excuse something you know you normally wouldn’t, or admitting that maybe you’re the one who got something wrong. It’s one thing to know what your standards are when they aren’t really being tested. It’s something completely different to figure out what you’re willing to do when those standards suddenly ask something of you.
But I also think part of having conviction is making sure we’re standing firm for the right reasons. There’s a difference between conviction and just digging in our heels, and sometimes figuring out which one we’re doing means asking ourselves some questions we might not particularly enjoy answering. Am I being fair? Am I missing something? Am I reacting emotionally? What happens if I do this? What happens if I don’t? Is this actually about what I think is right, or do I just really not want to be wrong? None of those are especially fun questions, but I think they matter. Conviction shouldn’t mean refusing to reconsider where we stand. Sometimes reconsidering it is exactly what integrity requires. Other times, we can go through every single one of those questions and still end up in the same place: No, this matters.
Something I try to remind myself, and my students, is that integrity isn’t about perfection either. Like most things, it takes practice. We all make bad choices sometimes. We misread situations, fall short of what we expect from ourselves, or hurt somebody along the way, whether we meant to or not. I don’t think integrity is necessarily found in whether someone messes up. More often, it shows up in what happens afterward. Do we admit what happened? Do we take responsibility for our part in it? Do we try to fix what we can? Can we accept that there might be consequences? And probably most importantly, do we actually do something differently the next time?
As I’ve stepped into more roles where I have a little more of a voice, I’ve also started thinking a lot about the way integrity changes when leadership gets involved. Integrity matters for everybody, obviously, but I think it carries a little more weight when someone chooses to step into a position where other people are expected to trust them, listen to them, or follow their example. I’m starting to think leadership probably should cost something. Not punishment or misery, and certainly not the expectation that those in leadership suddenly have to stop being human. But maybe it should cost a little convenience. A little impulsivity. Maybe some selfishness. And, unfortunately, sometimes a little popularity too. If you choose to lead, your choices are going to carry more weight. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for the expectations to carry a little more weight too.
I run into versions of that in a lot of different parts of my life. As a teacher, I try to hold my students accountable in my classroom. As an auntie, I try to help my nieces and nephews understand that their choices have consequences, both good and bad. And no matter what role I’m in, I’ve learned that holding a standard doesn’t always feel particularly noble while you’re doing it. Half the time it mostly feels uncomfortable. I question myself constantly. Sometimes people get mad. Sometimes it would honestly be a whole lot easier to shrug, let something go, and move on with everybody’s day. And sometimes that actually is the right thing to do. Sometimes grace really does mean letting something go, and sometimes letting it go is simply the wiser choice. That’s something I never want to lose sight of either.
I don’t think grace and accountability have to cancel each other out. You can care about someone and still expect them to take responsibility for what they did. You can understand why somebody made a particular choice without deciding that the choice no longer matters. You can feel sympathy for everything surrounding a situation and still believe there’s a standard worth holding onto. And maybe part of caring about people is believing they’re capable of meeting that standard in the first place.
The part I have to keep coming back to, though, is that none of this means much if integrity is only something I expect from everybody else. If I’m going to ask students, family, coworkers, or anyone else around me to live up to a certain standard, then I also have to be willing to ask the same things of myself. Am I willing to be honest when honesty makes me look worse? Can I admit when I was wrong? Can I accept correction without immediately getting defensive? Can I do what I believe is right when nobody is going to notice, much less applaud me for it? Those questions are a whole lot easier to ask than they are to answer sometimes.
But maybe that’s kind of the point.
Our values probably aren’t measured best by what we say we believe when believing them is easy. They show up a lot more clearly in the moments when living by them actually costs us something. And maybe that’s why integrity can feel so expensive when it matters most. It asks us to decide what we’re willing to protect when protecting it costs us some comfort.

​Over the last few months, I’ve been working to intentionally show up, whether that’s in bigger ways than I have before or in small, seemingly innocuous ways. While the majority of this has been spurred on by the beginning of a new school year, as I started thinking about how I wanted to approach this blog, I found myself expanding the idea into other areas of my life. The more I thought about what showing up actually looks like and means to me, the more I realized just how many ways we do it every single day, and how many of them we probably don’t even think about.
Maybe one of the easiest places for me to see that is at home, because homestead life has a way of making consistency pretty hard to ignore, especially when you have fussy animals that are more than willing to remind you.
On a homestead, showing up can be very literal. It can mean making sure the animals get fed at the same time every day, or else your neighbors get to hear from a very disgruntled cow. It can mean harvesting cabbage at just the right time, or else the heads split and end up getting passed along to the animals instead of being processed into sauerkraut.
The less obvious kind of consistency is the kind that doesn’t always demand your attention right away. It’s in the checking, noticing, maintaining, and learning from what happens over time. It might be noticing when the last frost comes in comparison to when the fruit trees start blooming, or regularly greasing and oiling the tractor to make sure it stays running smoothly. These aren’t things that need to happen day to day, but keeping up with them can so easily impact the things that do.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that same kind of quiet consistency shows up just as much at work as it does at home. Showing up to my classes with a planned-out lesson, getting reports or purchase orders in by a deadline, or even making sure weekly communications are updated are all regular parts of my job. They’re things people expect me to get done, and things I’ve come to rely on as part of the rhythm that moves us from one week and month into the next.
But just like on the homestead, there are quieter ways I can be consistent at work. It can mean greeting people with a smile even when I don’t particularly feel like smiling, or being patient when a student, or even a coworker, needs a little extra grace while working through an obstacle. I teach students that how you talk to people doesn’t just involve the words that come out of your mouth. It’s the facial expression, the body language, the tone you say them with, and the actions that surround them that make those words matter. If I’m asking them to be intentional about those things, then I need to be intentional about them too. I need to show up, not just for students, staff, or families, but for myself.
It’s amazing how quickly, once you start looking for it, you can see the ways consistency touches nearly every area of life. It shows up in the people we check in on, the promises we keep, the routines we return to, and the small ways we let the people around us know what they can expect from us. It shapes how we move through life and how we interact with the people in it. Whether that’s at home, at work, in our faith, or in our relationships, consistency creates the foundation we build from. And I think that’s why I’m trying to be more intentional about the quiet work of showing up, even when it doesn’t feel particularly significant in the moment.

Today was a day.
You know what kind of day I’m talking about. The kind where one thing after another after another after another kept coming at me, while the things I needed to get done just fell to the sidelines and waved as I raced by.
For someone like me, a Type-A personality for those of you who must know, I like having a plan. That’s the way I function best and most comfortably. I like knowing what I’m teaching, having my materials ready in advance, having run through the activity once myself, and having everything ready for the bell to ring. Unfortunately, life has not felt inclined to acquiesce to that preference. Between errands and pain, I didn’t sit down last night and get everything prepped and ready for today, either for my Intro to AI or my elementary library classes. Today didn’t feel inclined to grant me that allotted time either.
And then the world, as it so often does, continued to move along regardless of my preparedness. Students showed up, and I still had to teach.
Thankfully, I had just enough tricks up my sleeve that I wasn’t left floundering.
For my Intro to AI class, I use Google Slides to convey the lesson material. While I can easily use the online platform where the curriculum comes from, I’ve discovered I don’t love the platform for grading, plus it gives me three separate areas to check grades, also it just looks boring. For years now, whenever I use slides in whatever class I’m teaching, I keep a “template” slide, make a copy of it for each lesson, and follow a specific pattern. Thanks to having these templates, I can pull the information from the curriculum activities, lesson plans, and materials and easily plug it into a format my students are accustomed to, with directions right in front of them.
Thankfully, this was a shorter lesson. I was able to fit it into 13 slides, unlike the other day when our lesson was 33 slides. It was also a much more hands-on, turn-and-talk lesson focused on learning how to write strong prompts, how to provide peer feedback on prompts, and, most importantly, how to take that feedback and refine a prompt.
It wasn’t an information-heavy lesson, but again, with the structure I have in my premade templates, I’m easily able to pre-assess students going into a lesson, instruct on the key concepts, have them practice, and then assess their concept growth. The slides aren’t just something students look at while I teach either. They’re where a lot of their actual work happens. When something needs to be completed in their notebooks instead, I use an assigned emoji on the slide so they immediately know where that particular work belongs. Having that consistent structure means my students already understand what’s expected of them and where they’re supposed to be working, even when I’m putting the lesson together with limited time. I didn’t have to completely reinvent the wheel in order to make the lesson work.
My elementary students were an entirely different story.
Unfortunately for them, I don’t have a set “Library” curriculum. Yes, I have resources from previous librarians, however, the “newest” one is from 1994. So a lot of the time, I have to skim through old resources, try to modernize them, and create the materials myself. Thankfully, I’ve been doing this long enough that I have a plethora of self-made resources at my disposal.
For my elementary kids, I was easily able to pull up an interactive Candy Land-style game I created with library, tech time, Dewey Decimal, and PBIS facts that help assess their retention from those beginning-of-the-year library lessons. I pulled out my buzzers and some fruit snacks, and we had an afternoon of fun learning.
It’s because of days like today that I firmly believe in always having a backup plan.
And then sometimes a backup plan for the backup plan.
And no, that doesn’t mean I have perfectly meticulous plans detailed for every potential issue I may encounter. I wish I did, but alas, I’m only human. No, my version of a backup plan is making sure I have resources tucked away that I can easily grab from, keeping things that work at the ready, having systems in place to help me know which tasks can wait, and thankfully having enough experience over the years in my field that I can occasionally pull something out of thin air when absolutely necessary.
This isn’t a concept that applies solely to a classroom.
Our personal lives can sometimes be just as uncooperative. Learning to have backup plans for those situations is just as important, if not more so. Sometimes those backup plans look like having a little extra money tucked away in case of an emergency. Or knowing another route home when the highway closes. Or even having leftovers in your freezer when you don’t have the energy to cook. There are so many tiny backup plans we use throughout our days that we don’t even bat an eyelash at, but that keep us going and sometimes keep us sane.
Something important I’ve learned over my life, though, is that sometimes knowing when and how to pivot when Plan A stops being an option is one of the best skills you can learn. And I think a lot of us overlook this particular skill. We tend to imagine preparation as predicting what might happen and having exactly the right solution waiting for us. There is value in being able to do that. Personally, I love being able to make Future Stefani’s life a little easier. But life has an annoying habit of coming up with situations we didn’t put on the contingency list.
That’s when preparation alone stops being enough.
That’s when flexibility becomes just as important.
There are days when the lesson I have meticulously planned out and prepped for just isn’t going to fit the time, the mood, or the social/emotional climate of a group of students on that particular day. Some days technology absolutely refuses to cooperate with me. Some days I have to look past the obstacles life is presenting me and look at what I do have.
What can I reuse? What can I simplify? What actually needs to happen here, and what was just part of the original plan? What do I know how to do? Who can help? What resources are already sitting around waiting for me to remember they exist?
As a Type-A personality, sometimes I have to realize that my backup plan isn’t as elegant as my original plan…and that’s okay. So long as it is still enriching the education of my students, it doesn’t have to be pristine. The backup plan’s job isn’t to perfectly recreate Plan A. Its job is to get us through whatever made Plan A impossible in the first place.
Something I’ve had to learn is the difference between lowering the bar and accepting that sometimes it takes a few more steps to reach it. Current obstacles might mean I need more support, a different approach, or even a temporary step back, but the goal itself hasn’t changed. I’m still working toward the same bar... I’m just getting there by a less direct route than I originally planned

​With school here and autumn approaching, my days are starting to feel like they’re packed with one responsibility after another. Work, projects, errands, meetings, all the things that need attention. It makes it easy to fall into the trap of thinking the enjoyable parts of life happen after everything else is finished. The problem? “Everything else” is rarely ever finished.
That’s made me take a step back and consider that maybe the little things woven into all those responsibilities aren’t distractions from life. Maybe they are life.
As I stare at computer screens for more hours than is probably healthy in a day, a lot of my time is spent sending and replying to emails, managing social media, and generally communicating through the written word. When that becomes one of your primary ways of talking to people, unfortunately without the benefit of physical cues, it can become remarkably easy to turn a generic email into an illustrative monologue about the joys of Chromebook malfunctions. As someone who enjoys writing but doesn’t always have time to sit with my thoughts and construct worlds, characters, plots, and backstories, there’s something oddly satisfying about taking a mundane email and turning it into a slightly more entertaining account of an otherwise very boring occurrence.
Of course, these little breaks aren’t always something I create myself. Sometimes it’s as simple as the things elementary students say. The other day, I was teaching them the importance of raising their hands, only for one student to be an excellent example, raise their hand, and then ask, “Miss K, why is there white in your hair?” I conspiratorially told them it was because “I’m old,” only to watch them not bat an eyelash before proudly announcing, “Then my mommy must be real old cuz she has white hair like Elsa.”
In the same day, we were learning about how to be respectful in the library, when another student raised their hand and announced, as though the world is about to end, that the student beside them was touching them. The accused student immediately protested, “No! I’m not touching them! I’m just holding their hand!” At which point the entire class dissolved into giggles, Miss K included.
Sometimes the break from responsibility is even simpler. An audiobook, podcast, or music playing while I work on a project gives me a way to keep one foot in something that brings me joy. This is probably my go-to because I don’t necessarily have to stop doing what needs to be done. It just lightens the load enough that the work doesn’t feel quite so overwhelming.
As autumn starts to poke its head out, I also have a couple of small things waiting on the horizon that give me something to look forward to beyond whatever happens to be next on my to-do list. With new books coming in the Maasverse, I’m rereading Throne of Glass and A Court of Thorns and Roses and reading Crescent City for the first time in preparation. There’s something fun about having a whole pile of books waiting for me, even if getting through them will happen slowly.
The other feels almost lazy in the coziest possible way and involves Gilmore Girls. I stumbled across a group online that discovered if you start the series on September 22 and watch four episodes each week, you essentially travel through the year at the same pace as the characters. It’s such a small thing, but the idea of settling into four episodes each week as autumn turns into winter feels like exactly the kind of slow, steady indulgence I need right now.
Finding these little joys sometimes takes a little effort and introspection. You have to figure out what actually makes the weight feel lighter rather than simply adding one more thing to your schedule. But once you find them, they can bring a surprising amount of joy, relief, excitement, or even peace to an otherwise busy day.
Do they shorten the to-do list? Unfortunately, no. But they can make the list feel a little more manageable.
More importantly, when those little things are sprinkled throughout all the responsibilities, they’re a reminder that I don’t have to finish the to-do list before life can happen.
It’s already happening.

I’m tired. Not in the cute kind of tired where a good night’s sleep and an extra energy drink will fix things. I’m the kind of tired where every additional question feels slightly more complicated than it probably is, minor inconveniences feel a lot less minor, and sometimes I have to consciously locate my patience before I can actively use it. Unfortunately, I’m also realizing that these are probably the moments when it matters the most.
One of the things I’ve been thinking about already this school year is the kind of culture I want to help cultivate around me. I want it to feel natural to assume the best in each other, approach problems looking for ways to help instead of looking for someplace to lay the blame, and give each other a little grace when things inevitably go wrong. But if those are things I want from the people around me, they also have to be things I’m willing to practice myself, especially when I’m stressed, frustrated, or running on fumes. (Which I am.) Lately, that's meant learning to practice the pause, a concept I learned from former coworkers and family members who spent decades in education. Sometimes it’s only a few seconds between my first reaction and what actually comes out of my mouth, but those few seconds give me enough time to remember that I may not know the whole story, that I should assume good intent, and try to approach the person or problem in front of me with a servant’s heart instead of an exhausted one.
That doesn’t mean I magically stop being irritated. Sometimes the problem really is irritating. It doesn’t mean ignoring problems, making excuses for people, or pretending everything is fine when it isn’t. For me, it’s simply a conscious effort to make sure my stress doesn’t get passed along to the next person and that the way I respond reflects the kind of environment I keep saying I want to be part of creating.
I’m definitely not going to get that right every time, but I’m beginning to think that culture shifts happen just as much in these tiny interactions as they do in the big conversations. If I want to be part of changing the culture around me, I've got to be willing to let that culture change me too. So, especially on the days when I’m tired, sore, overwhelmed, and maybe a little crankier than I’d like to admit, I’m trying to practice the pause.

​Today was the first day of the 2026–27 school year. This is the beginning of my 14th year in education, and possibly for the first time since COVID, I came away from all our first-day happenings feeling genuinely hopeful. I am completely wiped out, 100000% ready to eat my dinner, pop some Tylenol, and go lie down, but I’m also satisfied in the particular way you can only be after a genuinely good day.
My day involved a lot of running back and forth, bouncing around the building, and moving from one task to another. Through all of that, there were a few things I had to keep at the forefront of my mind. As I interacted with staff, students, and the occasional guest, that peppy back-to-school energy needed to remain front and center. Questions and tech issues came in on a rotating basis, responsibilities piled on top of one another, and I worked to build buy-in for some of the ways we’re trying to reframe our school culture. Through all of it, I tried my hardest to remain enthusiastic and excited.
Funnily enough, this was the first time in a long time that staying enthusiastic and excited wasn’t particularly hard.
At some point, a little muscle memory kicked in. I fell easily into the familiar rhythm as I watched students and staff welcome one another back, laugh and work together, and chatter in the hallways between classes. I watched students proudly march through the school carrying fresh-picked produce they had planted last spring. The building felt alive again.
It has been a long time since our school truly felt like an OHANA to me. Today, for the first time in a long time, it did. It reminded me of what I love about this school and what I have always believed it could be.
So even as I sit here tonight with my back and legs hurting after a day that demanded far too much from them, I honestly find myself thinking it was worth it. Not because good work should require us to run ourselves into the ground, but because today gave something back. There is a difference between being drained by something and being tired because you poured yourself into something that mattered. Tonight, I can feel that difference.
Today reminded me that making a difference in education doesn’t always require some grand gesture. Sometimes it’s simply being genuinely glad to welcome students back. It’s giving people a reason to buy into a new idea. It’s laughing together, proudly carrying vegetables through the hallway, or helping create the kind of building where enthusiasm doesn’t have to be forced. Sometimes leadership is simply people deciding that things can feel better and doing what they can to make that happen.
I know every day this year won’t feel this good. Some of them will probably just be exhausting. But today gave me a glimpse of what our school can feel like, and it reminded me why I care so much in the first place.
Tonight, I am sore, tired, and 100000% ready to go lie down. But I am also hopeful. Hopeful because today gave me the first glimpse of what could be different. Not someday or in theory, but right there in the laughter, the enthusiasm, and the feeling of OHANA returning to our halls.
This year… I want to help make that difference last.

​I have a lot on my mental plate today. No, not in a cute metaphorical way. In the way that a dozen responsibilities, many not even related, are bouncing around while two or three are definitely trying to hide under the couch with the dust bunnies.
On days like this, I feel my mental control slipping when it comes to wrangling and tracking all of these tasks.
That’s why I have certain “checks and balances” in place to help not only myself, but those around me, stay accountable. It could be as simple as a shared calendar, a scheduled email, a checklist in my planner, asking for a second set of eyes to look over something before I send it, or even a self-inflicted reminder alarm to remember to follow up on something later. All of these are things I try to regularly do to help keep the important things from disappearing into the gap between “someone knows about it” and “someone actually did it.”
These systems aren’t necessarily signs of distrust or a lack of faith in anyone’s competence. They’re simply an acknowledgment that people, myself included, are human. We get busy. We misunderstand each other. We assume someone else has something taken care of. Sometimes we fully intend to do something, only to have five other things stack on top of it.
Ever hear the phrase, “It takes a village”? Accountability definitely takes a village. If something matters, there should be a clear way to know who is responsible for it, what needs to happen next, and whether it’s actually been completed. Otherwise, everyone can walk away believing someone else has it handled while the task quietly falls through the cracks.
That means it’s extra important that the system itself doesn’t become another overwhelming thing to maintain. The best checks and balances are often small and boring: a checkbox, a calendar reminder, a quick follow-up, or one clearly designated person responsible for closing the loop.
The goal of accountability isn’t to control every moving part. It’s to create fewer preventable surprises by giving important things somewhere to live besides inside an already overcrowded brain. On days like today, I’m especially grateful that I don’t have to rely on that brain alone.

Life for me over the last few months has been a series of negotiations. Do I chance walking through the grocery store and hope my knees don’t buckle? Should I lift this box and pray my back doesn’t pop regardless of the rods holding it in place? Do I join my family outside and try to beat the heat intolerance that will trigger my dysautonomia?
These are just a handful of the choices I have to make as I navigate life in a body that doesn’t always cooperate. Last year, I wrote an entire blog looking at the things I have to consider when I decide to go out, whether that’s running errands, spending time with family, or meeting up with friends. You can read that blog here: The Cost of Showing Up. In that post, I looked at what everyday activities can cost me physically.
As the last year has passed, those little fees have started to shift into bargains I’m making with my body so I don’t have to continue worrying quite so much about the cost of participating with my family and friends or doing the things I love and enjoy. If there’s one thing the last year has taught me, it’s that the cost isn’t always attached to big events. Sometimes it’s woven into the smallest decisions of my day.
Those are the bargains I find myself making more often now. Not necessarily about whether I participate, but about how I do it. I’m learning that sometimes keeping my independence means changing the way I move through something rather than forcing my body to do it the way it always has, or the way I feel it should.
The biggest demand my body has been making lately is that I use my wheelchair more often. As I’ve been walking through grocery stores, navigating farmers’ markets, and zipping around school buildings, I’ve begun experiencing more pain in my lower back that, in turn, has been affecting my legs with numbness, shooting pains, or a delay in responsiveness. So when excessive walking is required, especially in public places where a sudden buckle or misstep carries its own risks, I’ve started defaulting to my wheelchair.
There are also things I’m finding myself asking for help with much quicker than I used to. Cleaning up my classroom, for example, involved not only a lot of walking, but lifting, reaching, and repetitive movements. When spreading those tasks over a stretch of time either didn’t do the trick or simply wasn’t an option because of time restrictions, I had to be more willing to ask for help.
The reality of my body’s changing limitations is that things that used to feel normal or automatic are becoming things I have to “check” with my body first. And more and more frequently, it tells me no.
For someone who values my independence, that can feel like theft. Growing up with a disability, you get accustomed to a certain level of humility. It’s inevitable when your body regularly stops working in front of other people. But when your body starts changing the terms and conditions on you, even the pride you’ve managed to hold onto can feel challenged.
I don’t like asking for help. I don’t like having to sit down while other people work around me. I don’t particularly enjoy using my wheelchair in public and then watching people stare when I stand up to get out of it, as if mobility has to be all or nothing in order to make sense. These small practical concessions can feel degrading, even when I know they’re also the things helping me hold onto the independence I’m so afraid of losing.
That’s probably the hardest part of the bargain.
My biggest fear as my body starts demanding more from me is that people will begin trusting me with less, or that opportunities will quietly be handed to someone whose body doesn’t require the same accommodations. I can’t control whether people make those assumptions. What I can control is how I respond to the changing terms my body keeps handing me.
So I’m learning to bargain differently.
I’m learning that adaptation doesn’t always look like doing less. Sometimes it looks like finding a different way to get the same work done. I lean heavily on my family, friends, and support team, as well as technology, organization, and whatever other resources I have available to make tasks more manageable and to save my body for the things that actually require me to physically be there. If a tool can cut out unnecessary steps (physical or otherwise), reduce repetitive motion, or help me work smarter instead of harder, I’m going to use it.
There’s a grief in realizing that something you once did without thinking may now require planning, help, or a completely different approach. I don’t think adapting makes that grief disappear. I’m starting to accept that both things can be true at once. I can hate that the terms have changed and still figure out how to live within the new ones.
The wheelchair, the extra set of hands, the break I didn’t want to take, or the task I choose to approach another way aren’t necessarily signs that I’m losing ground. Sometimes they’re the very things that let me keep doing the work, spending time with the people I love, and showing up for the parts of life that matter to me.
I may not like the negotiations. I may grumble through more than a few of them. But if my body insists on changing the rules, then I suppose I’ll just have to keep finding new ways to play the game.

​I’ve been doing some mental juggling lately that makes it hard for me to focus on everything all at once. The nagging worry in the back of my head, as a self-proclaimed perfectionist at times, is that I’ll accidentally overlook something in my attempt to keep everything up. To keep that from happening, I sometimes have to be creative in how I keep things organized or how I approach tasks. I love technology in regard to how it can help us get more done or help us build on our strengths.
It was as I was sitting in my truck this morning, mentally limping along and trying to figure out what I wanted to write this week, that I decided to use the technology at my disposal. I pulled out my phone and opened ChatGPT. Now, before I have anyone audibly gasp at the audacity of me using this tool, I promise I haven’t handed over the keys to my brain just yet. I understand that people are very torn on this tool and on AI in general. However, as I tell my family, coworkers, and students, I don’t foresee this technology going away anytime soon, so people may as well learn how to use it appropriately.
Anywho, I opened ChatGPT and began chatting with it. For this particular brainstorming session, I decided to use the voice model and have a spoken discussion. I began by declaring that I had no spark of an idea, so I just wanted to talk and see if anything jumped out. So we did. We talked about getting ready for our upcoming farmers’ market, the books I’ve been reading, and the movies I’ve been watching. Inevitably, we ended up talking about the fast-approaching beginning of the school year. I brought up that I’d like to support staff in becoming more comfortable with AI because it feels irresponsible to me that we aren’t preparing students to navigate a world with AI or teaching them that there are responsible ways to use this resource.
It was during this part of the conversation that we meandered through various ways I could support staff, and ChatGPT suggested that I start by assessing how I use it. I humorously pointed out that I was currently just rambling at it when a thought occurred to me. A few years back, when I taught the TEALS program in our school, one of the things they taught us was the “rubber ducky” method. Basically, the idea is that we often process things better when we speak out loud. It doesn’t necessarily have to be to anybody, and we don’t automatically need feedback, but simply talking through a problem can allow our brains to connect dots differently and come to conclusions we might not have reached while thinking quietly to ourselves, or at least not as quickly.
I’ve used ChatGPT long enough that, for the most part, I generally like the advice or help it gives. However, sometimes simply having to sit down, organize my thoughts, and articulate them is enough for me to work my way back to the solution without too much assistance from it. This rubber ducky method can be amplified, not necessarily because of the coding and algorithms behind ChatGPT, but because, in order for those components to work to our advantage, we have to be able to string together our thoughts and articulate them clearly. Sometimes that little bit of extra effort is all the clarity we need.
Another way I use AI is when I’m learning new coding techniques for systems of my own. Recently, I decided to redo my Miss K’s Help Desk Ticket system at school. To help me keep track of technology requests, I have a Google Form that students and staff can fill out. Me being, well, me, I didn’t want them to send a request off into what probably felt like the void, never knowing whether it had actually reached anyone. When I originally created the system, I coded a simple email template and used a third-party extension to automatically generate a ticket for both me and the person submitting the request. Over the years, however, the tickets began to look dated, and the extension changed just enough that part of the information stopped appearing altogether. That’s not particularly helpful when the missing information is what I need to figure out how to help someone.
I wanted to update the system without continuing to depend on a third-party extension, so I did what most of us do when we have a problem and only a vague idea of how to solve it: I searched Google. Again and again, I kept coming back to the most obvious answer, Google Apps Script. Until this past year, I’d had only a limited understanding of JavaScript, the coding language used by Google Apps Script, and even less knowledge of how to build and implement a script of my own. I searched for examples and found plenty of useful tools, but most of them were either designed for generic purposes or solving problems unrelated to mine. Eventually, I turned to ChatGPT, or Codex, to be more precise.
Over the course of an evening, I outlined what I wanted my Help Desk Ticket system to accomplish and began working through how each piece would function. ChatGPT and I went back and forth over its features and functionality. It suggested a few small changes that would make the form more useful, along with a few others that I decided weren’t necessary for a district as small as mine. As I built the script, I used ChatGPT to help me understand how the JavaScript I was writing needed to be structured and implemented within Google Apps Script. When I ran into problems, it helped me troubleshoot them, explain why something wasn’t working, and think through different ways to organize the functions. I found it genuinely riveting to design and code a system around my own needs while learning the platform through practice. The finished product was still built from my ideas, decisions, and understanding, but ChatGPT was able to turn the process into a tutorial designed specifically around what I was trying to accomplish, making the material far easier to understand than a set of generic instructions ever could have.
A newer and surprisingly helpful way I’ve found to use ChatGPT is through scheduled reminders, check-ins, and updates. Within ChatGPT, you can ask it to send you certain things at scheduled times, whether that’s a simple “How are you doing?” to remind you to assess yourself or a briefing on topics relevant to your life. At the moment, I have three scheduled chats set up, each designed to help me be a little more intentional in an area where my attention can easily become scattered.
The first is a series of check-ins throughout my day. They aren’t so much opportunities for me to check in with ChatGPT as they are reminders to check in with myself. At different points, it might ask, “What’s your number one priority today?” or “Where are you on the spoon scale?” They’re simple questions, but they make me pause long enough to notice how I’m actually doing instead of charging blindly into the next task. If I answer that my priority is finishing a particular project, it can refer back to that answer later and ask whether I’ve made progress. For someone like me, who can become a little scatterbrained when technology tasks start hitting the fan, that small interruption helps me step out of the chaos and return to what I’d already decided mattered most. ChatGPT doesn’t determine my priorities or enforce my boundaries. It simply helps me remember the ones I chose before the day became noisy.
The second scheduled chat is what I call my “Daily Interest Briefing.” I gave it a collection of topics that either interest me or directly affect my work, including books, movies, technology, education, and Washington State news. I can continue shaping the briefing as my interests and responsibilities change, which makes it feel far more relevant than scrolling through a generic newsfeed and hoping something useful appears. As I begin shifting back into a school-year mindset, I especially appreciate that the briefing does more than list headlines. It helps me consider how developments in education or technology might affect my job, support staff and students, or be useful in one of my classrooms. It doesn’t replace my curiosity or decide what deserves my attention. It helps clear away some of the searching so I have more energy to think about what the information actually means for the people I serve.
The third and final scheduled chat I’ve set up recently is my “Daily Kindness Idea.” As I step into the ASB Advisor role, I keep thinking about some of the beautifully simple things previous coworkers have done to help both students and staff feel seen. While I’d love to boast that I’m a black belt in kindness, anyone who knows me knows that’s not quite the truth. I’m only a brown belt. Regardless of our kindness prowess, though, all of us can learn to be a little kinder. This daily reminder feels almost like a small morning challenge. Yesterday’s idea was simple: “Bring someone a drink without being asked. When you hand it to them, don’t make a big deal out of it. It’s a tiny act that quietly says, ‘I was thinking about you.’” Every day is already filled with opportunities for tiny kindnesses, but the reminder encourages me to make at least one of them intentional, especially on the days when kindness doesn’t come as naturally.
None of these scheduled chats can do the human part for me. They can’t decide what matters most in my life, genuinely care about the people around me, or walk into school and make someone feel seen. What they can do is cut through the noise long enough to remind me of the person I want to be. They help me pause, refocus, remain curious, and act with intention. In that way, the technology isn’t replacing the “us” in the work. It’s helping create more room for us to show up in it.
I understand why people worry that tools like ChatGPT might remove the human element from our work because, used carelessly, they certainly can. They can become a shortcut around learning, creativity, judgment, or even the uncomfortable but important process of sitting with our own thoughts. But I don’t think that has to be their role. To me, the more important question isn’t simply whether we use AI, but what we’re asking it to do. Is it helping us step away from the work that requires our voice, experience, and judgment, or is it helping clear enough space for us to bring more of ourselves to it?
This morning, ChatGPT didn’t decide what I believed or write this post for me. It gave my tired, scattered thoughts somewhere to land until I could finally hear the idea underneath them. The Help Desk system still required my vision, decisions, and growing understanding of the code. A reminder about kindness still requires me to notice another person and choose to act. Technology can organize, prompt, explain, and assist, but it can’t supply the part of the work that comes from who we are.
Maybe the goal shouldn’t be to ask technology to become more human. Maybe it should be to use technology in ways that leave us with more time, energy, and attention to be human ourselves. It shouldn’t replace the “us” in our work. At its best, it can help clear a path back to it.