I love Thanksgiving because when I am grateful I am usually feeling good about the world.

When I am grateful, I seem to remember to focus on all the great things I have… as opposed to focusing on the things which I do not.

When I am grateful I seem to be more patient, more enjoyable to be around and more content with whatever the world happens to serve me. Gratitude is a great space in which to exist and though I certainly do not live in its glow as often as I should – or would like – when I do, I gotta admit life is pretty darn good.

Blessings, indeed, abound.

What a great holiday, huh?

Happy Thanksgiving!

As we enter Thanksgiving week it really is a time for me to recognize how much my students mean to me. I truly am a better human being because they are in my life.

They make me smile, laugh, hurt, angry, and tear up. They also make me proud, ashamed, hopeful and fearful.

And sometimes they do this back to back to back as if it’s all happening in the same day.

But without a doubt, the kids in my classroom make me remember what it’s like to be a kid… and no matter how old you are, you never want to forget that.

If being a teenager in this world is often a journey of better discovering your own inner identity then being a person that works with teens for a living is often a journey of getting to remember the things that are both so awesome and so terrifying about life.

This Thanksgiving I am thankful for the hundreds of teens with which I work every day. They may be bonkers — and they certainly drive me bonkers at different times — but top to bottom, I adore them.

Teaching teens is good stuff… and people with “real” jobs… well, they don’t know what they are missing.