NIght before Election 2012

I remember that November day in 2008, there was a different atmosphere every where I went. Maybe it was because I was living and existing within the liberal and academic confines of a university, but I remember that victorious and liberating sense that hung about Minneapolis like it like it was yesterday. My class mates and I had worked hard in sorting out our own thoughts and responsibilities in voting in our first presidential election. Mine was made up of a few experiences, such as losing my job at an independent business due to the economic downturn, participating or observing worker's strikes on campus, participating in political performances and many lucid conversations with friends in college and friends from studying overseas. Being a campaign volunteer, and a Chicago-bred girl also helped the victor's cause as I was a bleeding heart Obama fan, ready to cast my vote for change. Flash forward four years later to my 25-year old self, to my classroom in Denver within an urban public school district. Now I am a current graduate student with 3 1/2 years teaching under my belt, working hard to close the racial and socioeconomic achievement gap, dutifully paying my taxes, using my health care plan as an independent, exercising my specific rights as a female, and doing my share to contribute to the American society. And may I add that the things I have experienced just in the last four years have transformed me into someone completely different than who I was four years ago when I cast my first vote. I have been exposed to the difficulties the economy has presented to low to middle class families. I have witnessed the difficulties that complicated immigration policies present. I have seen injustice within the American school system and I have been a part of the after effects from NCLB. This has made me wary and worried about the status of Americans, primarily with equity and accessibility for all citizens to a good, healthy and happy life. With all this being said, I still do have a lot yet to experience. More things to come that will shed even more light on the government and its connections to me. However I feel refreshed to take a step back and realize how much more affected and more informed I am this round, and confident about how I am casting my vote and how it will impact my future. On the night before the 2008 presidential election, I sat down and wrote about communication, and human interactions. Perhaps mostly because I was performing my first big civic duty of participating in democracy, to have my voice heard and my vote counted. Perhaps also I was heavily engaged in theater-based classes and soaking in new information like a greedy sponge every day. But in my reflections that night, I also charged my community with an important task that I myself in the last four years have failed to fulfill, so I am not about to blame our president for falling short on any of his promises. My much more insightful and empathetic self actually said, "No matter where you are, there is no harm in speaking with people about their world-view. Being as informed as you possibly can only makes you more confused, but it can also only offer an exchange to inform the less informed. Speaking with people, body to body, face to face and creating a chain of real story-telling I think is the most conducive way to START change, somewhere in the world at least. Build space for mutual respect and share your own history." Yikes, Caroline. Then how come you haven't been engaging with others about this election? Yes of course, engaging with friends who share the same views. Definitely engaging with my students, from the ages of five to fifteen, about who would THEY vote for and why, and asking them why I should vote for who I will vote for. Engaging with my parents and close family who I already knew agreed with me in the first place. Engaging with my boyfriend in a few challenging conversations, who tends to reject politics because of the devisiveness it causes within his family. But have I been trying to "informed the less informed?" I wouldn't put 4th graders into the less informed category, necessarily because they cannot vote. Back the train up, have I made myself as informed as I can possibly be? I wish I could do better. I wish I took time to speak with others who have different perspectives than I do, to understand their stories more thoroughly, and to challenge my own thinking. I teach my students to think that way, why can't I practice it myself? The public has been quick to size up Obama's '08 promises to the results he has presented since he was elected. But before we are so quick to consider his failures, perhaps we should check on our own. When resolutions or promises have you failed to maintain over the past four years? Over the past year, six months, week? How often do you hold yourself accountable to living the values that you hold so important in a leader of our country? Do you challenge your own thinking by engaging with others, or by taking opportunities to teach when you think there is a teaching moment to be had? Nobody is perfect, and nobody should pretend to be. But I do think that everyone deserves multiple chances to check in with themselves and hold themselves responsible for their own actions. Lucky for me, I spend my day chock-full of teachable moments and have many of them! But I have decided I am not going to waste any more of those opportunities. I am not going to pass up chances to listen, to consider or to engage (and that includes seven year olds to seventy year olds). My older, more reserved self, is going to take the advice of a strapping 21-year-old hopeful that landed herself in Colorado to take this voting opportunity to engage, to teach, to learn, to listen, and to live my values.