Hello, dear TOOS friends!
How are you?
I’ll be honest - I’ve been better! The political turmoil is hard to escape. We all have plenty of aspects of our own lives that are unpredictable and we deal with them as best we can. For most of us that means some days we do it better than others and can maintain a healthy perspective and all that jazz and some days we’re a little overwhelmed by it all and it feels… not great? And to have it so evident our own unpredictable human lives exist within a much larger, unpredictable environment is a lot to manage. At best it can be described as dynamic and at worst it’s volatile and scary.
Since the spring, one of the most frequent conversations I’ve been having is around people’s dread about the climate of polarization in their schools this fall. And then between Biden’s communications struggles and resulting calls from his own party for him to step down and then the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, the floodgates of political chaos seemed to have opened even wider, ensuring that we are indeed in uncharted waters.