10 People Who Inspire Me

There is so much flying around in my head from the Northern Virginia Writing Project Summer Institute. However, until it is over next week, I probably won't manage to get it all out and organized in any meaningful way.

Yesterday we talked about changemakers. Again, there is a lot of amazing thoughts around this, but I'm just going to share one piece of what we did. We made a list of ten people who inspire us. The lists were wonderful - parents, teachers, heroes. I found that my list was all people I actually know (although I haven't met one of them). I didn't have Ghandi or Martin Luther King, Jr or Mother Teresa or Jaime Escalante such on my list. It's not that those people don't inspire me because they do, it's that they didn't come to mind immediately.

Here's my list in the order in which I wrote it:

• Mary Ann Ryan (the principal who originally hired me and an amazing educator)
• Our School Librarian (a good friend, fabulous classroom teacher, and library goddess)
• Organized Chaos
• My Husband
• Science Teacher
• d/y dan
• Chris Lehmann
• A student from my class last year
• Unlimited
• Glennon Doyle
  

Most of the above are educators, apparently I can't get away from that. They are all brilliant and push me in a variety of ways - all of which I appreciate.