Get outside of my comfort zone, get outside of my comfort zone, get outside of my comfort zone…..

This is the mantra I have to keep chanting in my head this semester. 

I’ve been working in schools since I crossed over into adulthood.  I’ve taught in “inner city” schools in Chicago and Milwaukee and even suburban schools.  I’m comfortable in schools, as the teacher/mentor to children.  That is my comfort zone.

Through my current and past work with schools I’ve grown to understand that it is so very critical to be connected with the surrounding neighborhoods, even this I embraced…. as the teacher.  I would walk the streets, hold parent-teacher conferences in local family owned restaurants or even bus stops and even join in local community events at every chance I got- but I had an agenda, my own agenda.  I was “the teacher”.

This semester is different though- I keep going to my roots and thinking up a way to be in the schools, in a power position of the teacher or something similar, but I don’t want to do this.  I want to embrace and move past my power position as a white, female teacher/mentor/leader.  

I want to be guided by the community.  I just don’t know how!?!?!?!  

I’m finding myself nervous, unsure and even feeling physiological symptoms of anxiousness.  You know: the butterflies, shortness of breathe, …  

But I’m committed and by gosh I will find a way to get out of my comfort zone and learn from the community- not ask the community to learn from me.