This is my Teaching Credo.

So here I am, embarking on a new chapter of my life, a chapter that started in that classroom fall quarter of this year, and I need a new credo. This credo will lead me into my new field with a new set of expectations and concerns and hopes.

As a teacher, I want my kids to learn to love themselves and to learn to love to write and express themselves in whatever way they see fit. I need them to know that writing isn’t about the five paragraph essays or the thesis statements. That is completely different brain that handles that. Writing to write is about synthesizing everything in your schemata with everything in your life and spicing it up with all of the feelings and emotions you can’t express. Real writing is getting your story on paper. It doesn’t need to even be a story. It can just be these ranty things that I keep doing. It is just the most healthy thing in the world to sit down and empty your brain into words. It is like taking the most inexplicable theory in physics and translating it for dummy’s. While the same exact principle doesn’t apply to writing, it is the same concept: making something that is indescribable possibly understandable by a wide cross section of individuals.

I want writing to become a place where they can escape from everything that is hurting them in their lives. I want them to know that they can find refuge on paper, in their words. I want them to know that I will always be willing to read what they have written. I want them to feel safe in the English language and in the fact that I will always be there to support them as people and as writers and as thinkers. I want to be the teacher who will wear the macaroni necklace the kid has made for her because she thinks it is beautiful. I want to fill the role in the lives of my students that teachers like Caitlin have filled in my life.

I couldn’t make the change I am making right now if I didn’t have faith in the system of teaching and the role the influential teacher plays in the life of a child. Most every hero I have in my life was my teacher at some point. They cared for me as a student and as a human being while I was in their class and even now, years after our classroom discussions came to an end, they are still reaching out a hand for me and lending me words of confidence. That’s making an impact. That is changing someone’s life by being a part of it. That’s making someone secure in themselves, in the choices they make and in the support system they have if everything comes crashing down. I will be that teacher.

I cannot speak enough to the importance of that type of scaffolding in one’s life. Teachers got me through my step dad leaving, my grandpa’s death and now through my life changing decision to become a teacher. The only person I can say that I knew would always be here for me, since I got to CCM is Caitlin Kane and she is a model for everything I want to be in a teacher and a person. She is the most comforting person in the world and is so passionate about teaching and everything she does that it makes you wonder how she has enough room in her heart to love everyone as much as she does. I think that the decision to become a teacher has been living in me since the beginning of senior year but it took someone as strong, supporting and wonderful as Caitlin to assure me that I could do it. I needed such an amazing model of success to look up to in order to find the strength within myself to make the transition.

I cannot thank God enough, eight million three hundred thousand and fifty two times over, for bringing the two of us together as friends. There is no one else in the world who understands so precisely my every emotion and thought and feeling. I hope that can live up to being the ‘same person’ as her.

Fall In Love Again.

When you choose to fall in love again, love again

And all the stars and planets are aligned within

Your tender heart will gently open, open

Soft at first, then with the strength of violins.

- Serenity Fisher, Sophie's Dream

It's 9:30am on a Saturday morning. I rub my eyes like a baby who has just woken up from a nap. Normally, the sun outside the window and the prospect of being inside all day would send me crawling back underneath the covers, moaning for the alarm clock to stop whining at me to get out of bed. But this was no normal Saturday and this certainly was no normal reason to be sitting in CCM all day.

I shot from my bed, changed into the best clothes I had for a cool spring day and ran to CCM. All of this may seem like a hyperbole to you, considering the last time I actually shot out of bed for something was to get Starbucks before class rather than after. However, the first full read through for Sophie's Dream was today and every fiber of my being reinforced what was going through my head: sheer excitement. Sophie's Dream is the Fringe Festival show in Cincinnati I am working on this spring and it is that show that I swear is saving me.

Normally, love stories and happy endings and all of that scare me to death (aside from The Princess and the Frog). But this one is that love story that makes you believe in love and introduces you to this wonderful sense of self that this culture tends to overlook. And to top it all off, this show came at the precisely right moment in my life. At a time when I started believing that I was nothing worth looking at or after and when I was doubting my creative self, I needed something fun and wonderful and musical and inspiring to hold on to. This show is that, all wrapped up in a warm fuzzy blanket with an Eddie Bear on top.

The show is about Sophie, a writer, who has lost confidence in herself and rediscovers it in her dreams through the help of three Tree Muses, Olive, Willow and Laurel, who represent Sophie in the past, the present and the future. Perhaps the most beautiful part of this process to me thus far is that our production team represents these three muses in a magical way. And the combination of the three of us in a room is creativity at its finest. I am Olive, the marvelously naive stage manager who is awe of everything this process is already, who looks up to her counterparts with this wide-eyed wonderment of what her future could become if she follows in their foot steps. Caitlin is Willow, living beautifully in the present and being an absolute star. She's got this intelligence and wisdom that is unconventional and so comforting. Willow, the best friend character, is Caitlin because I don't think there are many other people in the world I could talk so freely to or feel so safe with. And then there is Serenity, brilliant, brilliant Serenity, who is our Laurel. She has her life together in the amazingly creative configuration that allows everything she does to shine. It's fantastic how talented she is. This script is to die for. The music is awe-inspiring, repeat-worthy, magic. And she is one of the nicest, happiest people on the planet.

The script is now on its fourteen version. You know what you get when you get to the fourteenth version? You get this marvelous piece of theater that lightens your heart and grounds your feet at the same time. Add a director who is stepping into the light to let her brilliance shine. Add a playwright/singer/songwriter whose songs have been lodged in my brain since I heard them. Add a wide-eyed stage manager who is learning to love her craft again and is in awe of the beautiful idols she has to work with and look up to.

That leaves us with, ladies and gentleman, Sophie's Dream.

Recipe for Disaster.

I have problems.

The first step to having a problem is admitting it. The second is analyzing it and figuring out why. The third step is figuring out what you can do about it. The last step is conquering it or assimilating it or accepting that it is a part of you.

So, there is the first step. I have admitted that I have a problem. Actually, I have multiple problems. Actually, today, I feel like I have just about a million and a half problems. What is worse is that I keep feeling like I am doing absolutely everything right today and for approximately 7 seconds, I am proud of myself. Then, like a Mac truck without any brakes, I am the pedestrian in the crosswalk who gets blindsided by the oncoming, out of control vehicle. Before I get completely side tracked, I'll leave this metaphor to die and tell you that I am failing at life today and have no idea why.

Here is where we come to Step 2: Understanding. I feel blindsided and confused and I start assigning myself problems. And then to those problems, I start assigning a hundred different ways from Sunday why I have those problems. I always start with my parents and work my way down the timeline of my life from there.

-Like any self help recipe, I'll supply an example:

a. Problem: I push people away because I don't understand or want to know what love feels like.

b. Why: Divorced parents. Love = someone leaving = pain = hurt = trust issues.

c. What Do I Do About It:...That leaves us at Step 3.

I've got the problem. I've got one possible answer to the reason why and now I need to think about what I do to solve this issue. The logical first start would be to trust someone. Let's hypothetically say that I am capable of that. Now, let's say that I find someone I care about enough to trust and I do so. I give them love and support and everything else underneath the sun because that's what the remedy calls for: unbridled adherence to the solution.

All that leaves is Step 4, correct? So...

A. Someone returns that love and I conquer one piece of my problem.

B. Someone returns that love and I am conscious that a change has occurred but am unable to accept that the problem is dealt with.

C. Someone breaks my trust again and I accept that loving people really does suck.

With all of that said, I hope that I have helped you realize how to come to terms with problems in your life. As for me, I've come to the conclusion that if you end up at point C by the end of Step 4 enough times, you stop admitting that you have a problem.

Sleepless Long Nights.

When I am stage managing, I am in control. I am living and breathing and thriving on the order that I have created. I run 30mph faster than even the greatest mistakes that the production will face to ensure that everything is under control. I am my own maestro, in a way, controlling the pace and ebb and flow of rehearsal with the flick of my Timex. It's this dazzling light scape with blinking stars and soaring comets and halos around the moon that I know, every complicated event, like the back of my hand. In those moments, I revel in the beauty of complexity and flourish due to my understanding of it all.

When I am living, however, lying underneath the stars, taking a long stroll, Easter egg hunting, those are the moments I am in limbo. I am swayed by the chill in the air, the smell of fresh cut grass, the prospect of finding something no one else has. So I walk into all of this without my notes and without my rehearsal reports and I am just expected to live. I must sit and watch the blinking stars, the real soaring comets, the real halos and question them. I'm constantly questioning and awaiting answers and being forced, due to my impatience, to fantasize and create reasons.

But perhaps, I grow as much from the moments when I am flailing, grasping for some semblance of control and subject to the time schedule of God and other human beings, as I do from the time I spend in charge. This week has been the 'Week of Wins'...and it has lived up to its name thus far. The very point of this week is to win at life and schedule our lives to experience life without a schedule.

And right now, at this point in my life, I can appreciate the beauty and wonder of questioning and living in limbo because of the amazing people who have helped me realize that I am Allie beyond the Stage Manager. It's scary to be standing at the threshold of your life and find ourself losing footing. It requires some of the most beautiful human beings on this planet to hold your hand and tell you that that'll love you for who you were and who you are about to become. It's those beautiful people that you have the best nights of your college life with and who have a hand in changing you for the better for the rest of your life. It really is difficult for us, as humans, to tell each other we love or care for one another. So the most amazing thing that can happen is when those words can remain unspoken and you know that forever, through whatever, this love, this comfort item, this best friend, will always be there for you.

I had some metaphor about potted plants that I had here earlier but I think what I just wrote is perhaps the best note I will ever be able to leave an entry on. The voice in my head is saying: Quit while you're ahead, sweetie.