Bucket Thoughts

I believe that our interests, what intrigues and challenges us, is that which feeds, restores and replenishes our souls. That which fills up our bucket. A wise colleague shared his thoughts about each person's bucket once during a particularly stressful time. I realized my bucket was getting pretty empty and that I needed to do whatever it was I did to refill that bucket. Unless my personal bucket was full, I had little to give to others. In a giving profession such as teaching, a full bucket is essential.

This bucket is a simple analogy, perhaps, for self-actualization, a place of psychological health where we can accept and express ourselves and respond to others openly, creatively, and humanely. This bucket never stays full; the more we learn, experience, appreciate, the more we seek. What saps my bucket are things that at first feel overwhelming. One-size-fits all educational solutions, punitive accountability measures, instruction that reduces reading to skill and drill, and mean people are a few things that take from my bucket. While I cannot solve everything, I can do something. But each act pulls from the resources in my bucket.

Among my interests--cooking (and eating!) wonderful food, my family, children, being on a sailboat on a crystal summer day--I realize that a major support of my interests for me is what I choose to read. Through books I can go anywhere, learn many things, laugh (and cry), understand others and myself. I express, define, and pursue my personal interests through my reading.

This is why my passion is to help students become readers--through reading they can become whatever they wish to become in life. Author Pat Mora calls this "bookjoy", the experience of getting lost in the pages of a book. It is freedom.