Category: Education – Teaching

  • A Pause, Not an Ending

    A Pause, Not an Ending

    People get tattoos for all sorts of reasons. Some honor someone they love, remember an important moment, celebrate a milestone, or carry a meaningful reminder with them wherever they go. Others simply appreciate the artistry and enjoy turning their skin into a canvas for self-expression. A tattoo can tell a story, capture a memory, reflect…

  • No Batteries Required: When Play Meant Something More

    Yesterday, I saw something I never thought I’d see again—especially not from a high school student. I saw a group of teenagers playing leapfrog. Leapfrog. Not a phone app. Not a video game. Not some new social media challenge designed to last three days before disappearing into the digital abyss. Actual leapfrog—the same game kids…

  • Commencement Season: Tassels, Tears, and One Last Trip to the Snack Bar

    There’s something strange about graduation season. For four years, students spend most of high school counting down to the end of school—talking about summer, freedom, and escaping homework forever. Then suddenly, during the final few weeks, everyone starts walking around campus like they’re in the last ten minutes of a movie. People who normally sprint…

  • The Cookie with the Hole in the Middle

    The Duplo cookie—that round, flower-shaped, sugary piece of goodness with a hole in the middle and a soft ribbon of filling tucked inside. Anyone who is anyone knows this tasty treat. The Duplo cookie never asked for attention. It didn’t need frosting that shouted or colors that competed. It just sat there—round, slightly crisp at…

  • Self-Inflicted and Poorly Supervised

    I know I don’t need caffeine. That’s the first honest thing I write today, and I almost want to stop there because it already sounds like the kind of sentence people say right before they absolutely do the thing anyway. It’s not even about needing it. Not really. It’s more like… curiosity. Scientific curiosity, if…

  • The Fine Art of Holding a Grudge

    When we were kids, grudges lasted about six minutes.Someone stole your crayon, you cried, your mom intervened, and ten minutes later you were both eating the same bag of chips like nothing happened. Justice was swift.Closure was immediate.Snacks were shared. Then we grew up. And somewhere between paying bills and learning how to properly sigh,…

  • Beneath Your Balcony

    Beneath Your Balcony

    Beneath your balcony, I become music—not the kind you hear,but the kind that trembles in your chest before a single note is played. The night leans in to listen, roses hold their breath, and even the shadows softenjust to witness the way you look at me. Your hand—how can something so small carry the weight…

  • If Only For A Moment…

    On Sunday, Mother’s Day, during the second hour of a four-hour gig, something extraordinary happened. As I stood beneath a tree playing my trumpet, a hummingbird suddenly appeared. It circled around me three… maybe four times, hovering right in front of the bell of my trumpet while I played. Then it flew upward and landed…

  • The Discipline of Presence

    I said this to a group of colleagues the other day. We were talking about the apparent apathy we see in students—and in many adults. “Failing to show up is giving the world your consent to move on without you.” Their response was thoughtful. They said the line had weight—but maybe it was too harsh.…

  • Mirror, Mirror on My Desk…

    We spend a lot of time looking outward. At expectations. At what other people are doing, saying, or thinking. We compare, we react, we adjust. Most of our day is shaped by everything happening around us. But we rarely stop and look inward. There aren’t many moments in the day where it’s just you and…

  • Watching Things Become

    I stopped by our high school’s main campus today. It wasn’t anything formal—just a few quiet minutes between responsibilities. Long enough to stand off to the side and watch the construction crews preparing the site for the upcoming concrete pour. The ground was already undergoing transformation—leveled, measured, marked in that familiar orange construction paint, lines…

  • Alone at the Happiest Place on Earth

    Most people would say the Disneyland Resort isn’t a place you go alone.That doing so feels equal parts pathetic and depressing. And maybe… on paper, it is. But I did it anyway. I was there for a two-day excursion—an Arts Education Leadership Summit. Work. Professional development. The kind of trip that comes with lanyards, schedules,…

  • Neither Light Nor Dark

    I have been a lifelong fan of Star Wars. What has always drawn me most is not just the scale of its worlds or the depth of its mythology, but the tension at its core—the conflict between light and dark, and more importantly, the space that exists between them. Recently, I visited Disneyland and spent…

  • Elegance in Monochrome

    Elegance in Monochrome

    Right now, I see myself in black and white—as if life pressed pause on everything unnecessary,leaving only what’s real enough to hold its shape in light and shadow. This is me channeling the elegance of the Charros of Mexico’s golden era—when presence meant everything, and even silence carried dignity. This is an older photo, but…

  • Between Tradition and Memory: A Mariachazo Reflection

    Between Tradition and Memory: A Mariachazo Reflection

    We’ve all been to concerts. We all know what it feels like to sit in a crowd, to wait for the first note, to remember pieces of music long after the night ends. We all carry our own memories of them—the sound, the crowd, the moments that stay with us in different ways. But Mariachazo…