A little over two weeks ago, I got the amazing opportunity to go to Cupertino, California and attend something called Apple Academy. If you try to Google it, you won’t find a website or really any information about at all. It’s all part of the “Apple Experience,” so it’s by invitation only and very hush-hush. It’s a program offered to schools that are currently or about to deploy a one-to-one Apple device initiative. It’s a week-long immersive experience with a group of educators in similar roles with similar skill levels from all across the country from public, private, K-12, and university backgrounds. So far, you’re probably wondering why the word awful is in the title of this post. So let me take a few minutes to give you the backstory.
A couple weeks before I left for Apple Academy, my grandmother had a stroke and began to rapidly decline. She was 93 years old and in a memory care unit at a nursing home in my hometown in Richmond, Indiana. Every few days, I checked in with my mom to see how she was doing. We talked about my upcoming trip and how I was worried about traveling when Grandma wasn’t doing well. We agreed that she wouldn’t want me to miss a great opportunity like this one, so I didn’t make any changes to my trip. At the end of my first day at Apple Academy, I got a text from my mom asking me to call her when I got back to my hotel room. Before I picked up the phone, I already knew what she was going to tell me. My grandmother had passed away that morning at the age of 93 and one week old. The logical side of my brain saw this coming and knew that it was the best thing for my grandmother. She would finally be reunited with my grandfather who she had missed every day for over 20 years. After I hung up the phone, I pulled myself together and headed down to the lobby to meet a group to go out for dinner. When I met up with a couple of people from the group, I quickly told them the news of my grandmother and then joined in on the discussion about where we should go to eat. We piled into the hotel shuttle and as we waited for one more person to arrive, a wave of nausea passed over me. I quietly excused myself and explained that I suddenly wasn’t feeling well and thought it would be better to just stay in my room for the night. That feeling of nausea didn’t go away for about five days. No matter how logically I could rationalize with myself that my grandma had experienced a full life and she was finally at peace, my emotional side just couldn’t let go of her. Between the time difference and grief, I didn’t get a great night’s sleep that night and woke up bright and early at 3:30 am and couldn’t fall back to sleep. By 7:30 when the first session started, I felt and looked like a zombie. I had a terrible headache, my eyes were red and puffy, and the nausea was almost unbearable. I made it about two hours into the program and in the middle of my group’s presentation, I felt so sick I had to leave the room. I went into a bathroom stall and just let go of all of the emotions I had been holding in all morning, I sobbed and suddenly my nausea started to subside. I calmed myself down and re-joined the group. The rest of the day, I took breaks to go release some of the pent-up emotions to make it through the day. I am so grateful to all of the attendees and program coordinators, despite only knowing them for one day, they rallied around me and made me feel so comfortable and loved when I needed it. Each day got a little bit better: I slept a little more, I felt a little less nausea and I cried a little less. I was able to stay for the whole program and fly directly to Indiana at the end of the week to join my family.
So what did I learn from this experience? A couple of things.
First, no matter how prepared you are for something, whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing, you can’t control how you feel. It made me reconsider how I may approach people when they’re processing feelings. Phrases and helpful comments that are meant with good intentions sometimes come across as: “Just stop feeling what you’re feeling and accept it.” I know that wasn’t the intention of the people that said these things to me, but it made me feel like I had to explain why I felt what I felt - which in all honesty only made me feel even more.
Second, I will NEVER forget that week of my life. My learning that week and my emotional journey are so wrapped up into one another that it is one of those experiences that will be imprinted on my brain. What is particularly interesting about this is that part of the training that week was revisiting quite often a graphic that demonstrates a balance of emotional and instructional needs. We talked about how emotions tie into learning, all the while I was experiencing that first hand. This experience has already prompted me to think about how I approach things in the classroom with my students as well as how I approach professional development with teachers. Things that seem so insignificant like assigning seats on the first day of school or the first day for new teachers can really make an impact on emotional experience for participants. Assigned seats can lower the anxiety of those introverts that are pushing themselves to make new connections in an unfamiliar environment.
I hope that by writing this post, I help someone reconsider their approach in the classroom or their approach to someone processing their emotions. Writing this, I teared up a few times remembering that week, but it also helped me process that experience and continue to move forward.
