The Daily Post is asking us to write about three things that we believe, and three things that we don’t. Three things that our hearts tell us are either true or not.

Ah, what do I believe?

The first thought that popped into my head is the fact that “I believe in children.”  I believe in their honesty, in their basic goodness, in their desire to be kind.  I believe that humans, in spite of so much evidence to the contrary, are born to be altruistic.

Why do I believe this?  Because I am a public school teacher, that’s why.  I see it every single day.  My heart recognizes the truth that is the goodness of children.

What else do I believe?

I believe that love never dies. I believe that it goes on beyond our view, beyond our lives, beyond our short existence.  Call me crazy, call me delusional. I know that I feel my father’s love every day, five years after his death. I know that long after I have gone from this place, the love I feel for my children will endure.

So the first two were easy…….What will be my third belief? What other ideas do I hold in the core of my heart?  Here’s the challenge, my friends!

I believe that it is important to use a really high quality olive oil to do your best cooking.  I believe that dogs have a level of wisdom that few humans can match. I believe that sleep is vastly underrated.   I believe in music; no matter who is making it, if music comes from the heart, it has the power to heal.  I believe in laughter. I believe in local foods.  I believe that everyone needs to belong.  I believe in coincidence and synchronicity.  I believe in the healing powers of a good cry at the right time.  I believe that a home cooked meal, served with love, is the ultimate gift.

I guess I can’t really choose one belief to be the “third” in my trilogy.   I guess I have a lot of beliefs.

And my next task is to list three things that my heart tells me are not true.  Much easier, I think!

I do NOT believe that we need standardized tests and rubrics to understand how our students think or what they understand.  I am truly horrified by our reliance on these simplistic measures: if I were a lazy teacher, I’d be able to simply give the tests, score the rubrics and never think about the children as learners.

I do NOT believe that more guns will create less gun violence. I do NOT believe that the founding fathers wrote the second amendment so that every untrained civilian in the country would have the freedom to own and operate weapons of mass destruction.

I do NOT believe that the world is worse than it was in the past. I don’t think that kids are more disrespectful, that parents are more entitled, that violence is more pronounced.   I think that we fool ourselves with these arguments every single generation so that we don’t have to face the reality of one simple fact:

Humans are flawed. We are imperfect.  We lack self-control.

Even so, I do believe that all people are worthy of respect and love.  I do believe that there is more good in this world than there is evil.

I believe in children.