Category Archives: Teaching

Mar 09 2012
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Life, Teaching

"For those of you that have never seen the ocean…"

Today my students got their wish.

Nearly 120 fourth and fifth grade students, at least two dozen parents, and five teachers piled into three funky old buses that bounced happily down the road to San Francisco.

Before even exiting our bus, one student exclaimed, “This is the best field trip I have ever been on!”

The initial view of the city was just as exciting as I hoped.  The students were giddy as they spotted the skyline, the Golden Gate bridge, Alcatraz.  They anxiously held their breath through the tunnel on Treasure Island, carefully making their wishes at the other end.  However, to my surprise, it was not just the city that excited them– it was the cows on the hillside before that, the coastal mountain range itself, (“Are those as tall as the Himalayas?”), and the glee of waving to other school children on passing busses out the window.

Of course, the Exploratorium earned its own acclaim.  Beginning with lunch outside the Palace of Fine Arts, eager children fed the ducks, the swans, and the pigeons in the perfect San Francisco March sunshine.  The exhibits soon followed, sucking them in with the truly magical promise that they would not get in trouble for touching anything.  My personal favorite was the rather low-brow, toliet-shaped drinking fountain.  While I could not bring myself to drink from it, (despite the promises of drinkability), I delighted in watching the students psyche themselves into it.

Oddly, however, it was the bus ride home that left me the most satisfied.  Despite an earlier response that we would not cross the Golden Gate Bridge, the bus driver announced a change in plans upon our departure.  To the sheer delight of the students on my bus, we did cross the Golden Gate Bridge, and it was magical.

“For those of you that have never seen the ocean,” the bus driver called out proudly, “turn and look out on your left.”

Cameras held out excitedly in the air, many of my students took in the vastness of the Pacific Ocean for the first time.  I wanted to cry, but I smiled instead.  Floating across the bridge on a crazy, bouncy bus full of happy children, I remembered why I decided to become a teacher.

“WHOA!!”
I love the lighting and the architecture of the Exploritorium.  I hope that its new home on the waterfront is just as cool!
Brought to you by popular demand, the teacher ninja photo.  Lisa was trying to view an optical illusion with one eye when I snuck in there for the pic… Clearly, teachers are always mature adults.

My infamous happy, sparkly shoes, (key ingredients for any good day!)

More of the cool lighting
Close-ups of plants because I can’t legally show you close-ups of the children…
“We really get to go over the Golden Gate Bridge?!”
Our own magic school bus!
Happy kids, (Note: This picture is not a close-up, so I think that I can get away with posting it!  Yippee!)
End Result: Two very happy teachers! (Really, five… But we were lame and didn’t get a group teacher photo…  Insert sad face… That last part is for you, Regina!)
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Mar 02 2012
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Teaching, Writing

Luck & Hard Work

Luck and hard work can be very easy to confuse.  I work hard, but I do not always feel lucky with the results.  Teaching, in particular, often leaves me questioning the correlation between the two.  Maybe it is true of anything that is a craft– that the hard work takes longer to pay off.  
It is just so easy to think that successful people are lucky and forget the role that hard work plays in their success.  I know that I often catch myself thinking that published writers are lucky.  However, I also know that they put in a ton of work and refuse to give up, which ultimately matters more than luck.  After all, you will never publish anything if you do not write it or pitch it in the first place.  Maybe, then, the secret is not luck, but that successful people are the ones that do not give up.
I’m trying to remind myself of this, to keep myself motivated.  The ironic part is that I remind my students of this all of the time.  “This is hard!” they’ll say.  “Yes, life is hard, and you have a choice.  Either you can work hard at it and be successful, or you can give up and never succeed.”  I’m pretty sure that I said this at least five times this week.  Funny how sometimes we do not hear our own words.

I thought that you might also like the reminder to make your own luck.  If, like me, you’re pursuing a creative endeavor that would benefit from online networking, check out this great post about making your own luck.

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Feb 20 2012
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Life, Teaching

Advocacy, Humility & Gratitude

It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed. The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues. When a mind is raised, and animated by scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities which would otherwise lay dormant, wake into life… 
– Abigail Adams

I read this quote on a friend’s Facebook page recently, and it touched me deeply.  It made me think about how greatness does not come out of avoiding difficulty, even though it can be very tempting to do so.  

When I first realized that I wanted to be a teacher, I found myself inventing reasons not to follow my heart.  Mostly, I was afraid of failure.  I was afraid that it would be too hard and that I would not live up to my own expectations.  It was far more comfortable to avoid failure altogether than to face it head on.  Then, somehow, I found myself doing it anyway, and I was right– it was really hard and there were many days that I failed. But, in allowing myself to fail, I also gave myself space to grow.

In becoming a teacher, I have also become an advocate for children. Some of these children come to school hungry, cold, and in need of a lot of love.  Many of these children lack the life experiences that I treasured growing up.  Accordingly, in a strange way, they have become my children, who I love, guide, and struggle with everyday.  In taking on this role, I have accepted the humility that comes with asking others to help them, and this in turn has opened my eyes to the great generosity of people all around me, creating a humbling gratitude inside of me.

A few months ago, I shared how painful it was to watch students come to school without jackets.  It made me remember the times as a child when I forgot my jacket and felt cold.  The idea that these kids weren’t forgetting jackets, but instead did not have them, broke my heart.  Nonetheless, I was amazed by how many people reached out to me after I shared this experience.  My dad even marched into my classroom the very next morning with a jacket for a student that I told him about!

A dear old friend from college, who has always had an amazingly full heart, also reached out to me.  Without being asked, she organized a fundraiser among the employees in her office, and raised enough money to buy nearly two dozen jackets for the students that were still coming to school cold.  These jackets were delivered to my house this weekend and I could not believe how beautiful they were.  The fact that strangers in another city were willing to reach into their own pockets to help the students at my school was deeply humbling.  My gratitude is immense.

The willingness of people to help without even being asked has inspired me.  It has shown me that when presented with a need, many people want to help.  This is turn has inspired me to begin asking people for help, an act that does not come easily for me.  Recently, another teacher and I set up an online fundraising site to ask friends and family to help us take our students to the Exploratorium in San Francisco.  To our amazement, we have already raised more than $600!   

Between the jackets and the field trip money, this week has inspired me to keep moving forward, even when things feel difficult.  I am deeply touched by all of the people that care enough about our students to keep them warm and give them new life experiences.  Thank you to everyone that is teaching me humility, giving me reasons for great gratitude, and helping to change the lives of students at my school!

Gigantic bags of beautiful jackets for students at my school!

Thank you, thank you, thank you Old Navy donators!


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Feb 15 2012
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Home, Life, Teaching

Valentine’s Day Confession

It’s official, I’m out of the closet, I love Valentine’s Day!

I used to force myself not to like it.  I reasoned that it made people that I love feel lonely, so I wanted to support them by not liking it.  I also scoffed at how arbitrary the date was– complaining how it was a capitalistic excuse for more materialism.  Last year, I went so far as to tell Alex that I did not want presents and that I did not care if he had the closing shift at work, (I thought that I was being generous to his coworkers that actually wanted the time to celebrate!).

Today, however, I realized that I do like Valentine’s Day, even if there are aspects of it that still annoy me, (like all of the horny men wandering around looking for flowers at the grocery store!).  Despite the annoyances, it no longer bothers me that it is a day that we made up.  So what– aren’t all holidays days that we made up on some level or another?  Maybe this one is more recent, but I do not see anything wrong with a day based on love.  After all, isn’t love critical to our happiness as human beings?

I’m not saying romantic love… Although, that kind of love is nice too.  I’m just saying love.  As an adult, I’m finding that Valentine’s Day is a day that I tell my friends, students, and family that I love them.  I don’t tell them with expensive gifts, but with little gestures: a cut out heart with kind words, a card, a text, a phone call.  In fact, it turns out that Valentine’s Day results in the greatest outpouring of token gifts and sweet little cards from my students of any holiday.  I have a veritable mountain of candy and cards that make me feel appreciated!  What’s so wrong with expressing our love this way?

In truth, I witnessed many little acts of love that made me happy to be alive today:  A coworker’s husband marching across campus with a gigantic bouquet of roses, (to the sheer excitement of the 120 students watching at recess!).  A student excited to deliver her one special hand-crafted valentine to a boy that she likes, (reminded me of the valentine that Alex made me in fourth grade!).  My students treasuring the little valentines that I made them.  My dad unexpectedly delivering a valentine to my school, complete with a generous donation for our upcoming field trip.  Incredibly kind words of support emailed from my mom.  A woman taking the time to pull into the grocery store parking lot just to cuss me out for changing lanes at the same time as she did, (okay, that happened, and it made me laugh, but maybe it doesn’t belong on this list!).

Even though I’m looking forward to seeing my husband tonight, it has been the acts of love from other people that have brightened my day so far.  I’m sure he’ll make me smile too, when he gets home from work, but I’m realizing that Valentine’s Day is far more than a romantic holiday based on excessive consumerism.  It’s a chance to tell people that they matter to you.  If you’re feeling sad or lonely tonight, you’re entitled to dislike this holiday, I don’t blame you, but also consider reaching out to the people that you love.  It will make them smile, and chances are, it will make you smile too!

The valentines that I made for my students.  It is amazing how a few kind words so clearly brighten their day!

Simon going nuts on one of my gifts from a student… oops!

You’ll be happy to know that the bear survived!  Happy Valentine’s Day!
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Feb 14 2012
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Life, Teaching

We’re really going to San Francisco?!

Today one of my toughest students had a revelation during the middle of his parent teacher conference.  We have been planning a field trip to the Exploratorium in San Francisco for a few weeks, but the news finally hit him.  “We’re really going to San Francisco?” he asked me over and over.  He was incredulous.  It was as though I told him that we were going to get on a bus and go to Disneyland.  “Are we going to come back?” he asked, after a couple of minutes of contemplation, hoping perhaps that we were either going to stay there forever or more plausibly rent a hotel room.

Listening to this student reminded me of how fortunate I was growing up.  Even when times were tough for my family, we still went to San Francisco.  It’s actually one of my family’s favorite stories, how even during the hard years, we still made our annual Christmas pilgrimage to “shop” in the city.  Of course, there was not a lot of shopping those years.  My dad would take us every year at Christmas, while my mom would take us in the summer for the joys of tourist destinations like Angel Island, Alcatraz, and Golden Gate Park.  The idea that other children did not get to go to San Francisco was foreign to me– how could you not go somewhere so cool that was only a couple of hours away?

At another parent conference this afternoon, a mom that is struggling to make ends meet because of her severe illness shared how her son and daughter have been visiting homeless people along the American River as part of a project at their church.  It is also her son’s fifth grade service project.  The kids have been praying with the homeless and collecting useful items to give to them every Friday evening.  The mother shared with me how this experience has changed her family.  She said that no matter how tough things have been for them with her illness, they still cannot help but feel immense gratitude meeting the people that live on the river in Sacramento– at least she and her family do not live outside, she added with extreme sincerity.  I felt so humbled by how genuine she was with her words.

No matter how hard my job is, it never fails to humble me.  I feel so inspired by the people that I meet.  Many of them are full of so much hope and giving despite the extreme challenges that they face.  The family of the student that was in awe of getting to go to San Francisco offered to help pay for another student to get to go too.  They do not have a lot of money, but when they heard that we needed help finding $3,000 to get everyone there, they wanted to do what they could to give more students the experience that their child is so excited about.  This was especially touching after hearing the mom who is struggling financially and physically but so generous with her heart.  She has two students in fourth and fifth grade, which will likely mean $30 total, an amount that would create a financial burden for them.  I’m so touched that in this world that feels so cold and unfriendly at times, that people still care about each other.

I was talking to my husband about all of this tonight and he shared with me his first memory of San Francisco.  Like my students, he first visited San Francisco as a fifth grader taking a field trip to the Exploratorium.  He said that he never forgot what it was like looking at the city while crossing the Bay Bridge for the first time.

I’m excited that my students will soon have this moment too.

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Jan 22 2012
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Life, Teaching, Writing

The Mixed Emotions of Sunday

Each week, Sunday brings mixed emotions for me.  My job as a teacher can be all-consuming, so Sunday reminds me that it’s time to gear back up and get ready for the week to come.  It requires grading, planning, and refocusing to minimize my stress during the week.  It is also the day that I visit my family and attempt to catch up on my book.  Writing is requiring a lot of patience because I have so little time to do it and so much desire to lose myself in it…  Not to mention grocery shopping or making sure that our house is clean for the week!

In short, Sunday is full.
I know that life is full too, not just Sundays, but for whatever reason Sundays often feel like the fullest day of the week.  I find myself trying to cram everything that I want to accomplish into Sundays because the week days are monopolized by teaching and Saturday is the day that I let myself relax, do less, and generally spend my time with Alex, (since it’s the only day off of the week that we share).
I want to learn how to achieve more balance while also holding onto all of my priorities.  I guess prioritizing is a part of life, I just wish that I had time for everything!  What a lovely world it would be if I could get everything done that I need to be a good teacher, have plenty of time to write my book, keep a clean house, get enough exercise, and still have enough time for my friends, family, and Alex.  I can’t even imagine what it feels like when you add children into the equation.  I guess your priorities shift.  
For now I just want to figure out how to fit all of my priorities into the picture!  I think that is why Sunday is bittersweet for me; I have so many things that I want to do with this one precious day and only 12 hours or so to do them!  I’m sure that there is some Zen teaching that would help me about now, but no time to look– happily off to the next Sunday priority but also sad to be putting my writing away for the day!
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Jan 10 2012
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Life, Teaching

Kettle Corn, Sparkly Shoes, and Being a Little Girl

Early this evening I found myself sitting on my kitchen counter, eating a bag of kettle corn.  Let me be specific, when I say eating a bag of kettle corn, I don’t mean a handful.  Likewise, when I describe myself as sitting on the counter, I was fully on the counter, like feet extended out on the counter, not just casually leaning against it.  I did not even bother to take my jacket off.  I just came in, sat on the counter, and ate kettle corn, sulking.  This may all seem trivial, but for those of you that know me, I routinely attempt to eat no sugar and the act of sitting on the counter gorging myself in it was pure rebellion.  I was acting like a small child.

It took my phone ringing to realize that I was pouting.  Pouting about a bad end to my afternoon and an overwhelmed moment of stress, I was having a moment.  Which brings me to here and now.  I’ve decided that 2012 is the year that I’m finally ready to shed my pouty baby self and be done with her.    You would think that by 28 I would be well past that phase, but I still have my moments.  In fact, I’m pretty sure that I looked a lot like many of my fourth graders, sitting there throwing popcorn at the dog and feeling sorry for myself.

Somehow, all of this makes me think about something that I said last week to another teacher, “The secret to happiness is sparkly shoes.”  Wearing a new pair of Toms with threading that sparkle, I walked around in a good mood all week, smiling when I noticed that I was wearing sparkly shoes.  Upon discussing my happy mood I decided that it HAD to be the shoes.  I felt like a little girl.  The simple things, I tell you, the simple things!  Apparently the child inside of me is not all bad.

I leave you with this cute child for no other reason than that her picture made me smile.  I found her when googling sparkly Toms and wished that I could be as stylish as she is…  I could not find my shoes, (I kept getting the crazy sequin ones!), but trust me, they’d make you smile too.  I guess that growing up is finding the balance between letting the pouty child go and keeping the one that is still full of wonder about the simple things, like sparkly shoes and kettle corn.

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Dec 06 2011
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Teaching

Jackets and Other Fun Things

Trying to write a book is zapping my energy to blog.

That aside, there are a couple of things that I want to celebrate.

First, I recently noticed that a handful of my students still do not have warm winter jackets.  This was very saddening to me, (even more so than all of the challenging life stories that I hear everyday, funny where the line is for each of us).  I shared my frustration with friends and family and received a huge response from people willing to help me find jackets for my students.  My dad even went to Target at 10:00 at  night just to buy a jacket for one of my students, (and showed up the very next morning to deliver it!).  As much as I was saddened to think of my students cold, I was really inspired by how many people in my life care enough to change this.

Second, I worked 52 hours last week!  This is a celebration because I had been working 60!  I am cutting myself off at 5PM, (7AM to 5PM), and forcing myself to spend only a couple of hours planning on the weekend.  It feels better, even if there may at times be a mess on my desk.  My goal is to keep this new trend up.  Eventually I want to join the 4:30 club, but I’m not there yet.  And, yes, there really is a 4:30 club among some of the teachers at my school!  But, that’s a good thing.  I’m feeling like the quality of my teaching is going up with the decrease in quantity of work, as I’m more patient and mentally prepared to deal with everything that comes my way.

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Nov 26 2011
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Life, Teaching

Perspective

This morning I woke up excited to go back to school on Monday.  Instead of a dream where nothing was going right in my classroom, I dreamed that I had a fabulous day where everything was coming together and I felt like an effective teacher.  Dreams are very powerful in setting the tone during my waking hours.  Now, I am sitting here re-energized to go back to school, excited to see my students, eager to try some new tricks and to be consistent with my old ones.

It sure beats the dreams I have where everything is going wrong and I wake up a stress-case!  It’s funny too, just yesterday I was telling a friend how the end of breaks are always so hard for me, how I start to stress about time slipping away from me, about how quickly I’ll be back absorbed in the challenges of my classroom.  However, with a shift in perspective brought on by a restful week and an encouraging dream, I’m now sitting here excited to go back.

Realizing how easily my perspective can shift from a stressful one to an excited one causes me to wonder whether there is an easy trick for always remembering to reframe my thinking.  I feel like it is trickier than it sounds, but I also think it is funny how often something seemingly little can help me change how I see things.  In this case, I’d like to find a way to always remember to step back and look at my job as an exciting and rewarding challenge when I start to become stressed, overwhelmed, or nervous.  I’m determined that it is possible.  If you have any tricks, I’d love to hear them.

So, happy Saturday.  I am determined not to look at today as two days before I have to go back to work or as “Oh no, time is running out.”  Instead, I am determined to embrace today as its own, completely independent entity full of events and activities that I have been looking forward to, as well as a chance to get caught up on little tasks before everything gets busy again.  May you have an equally enjoyable and productive day and remember that how you look at everything around you matters too.

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Oct 29 2011
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Teaching

Job satisfaction, life satisfaction

Alright, so this week has not lived up to last week in its revelatory nature, but it has been a good week.  Not perfect, or over-the-top amazing, but good.  I guess that few weeks in life really are perfect or over-the-top amazing, so good is satisfying enough.

When I left my old job, I left in search of job satisfaction.  I was determined that there had to be a job out there that I could feel good about on a consistent basis.  A job where I would not while away the hours feeling frustrated, bored, slave-like, and stressed simultaneously.  For awhile, I even lost faith that such a job existed, at least within my grasp.  This is why making the leap to teaching was such a gigantic leap of faith for me.  I was willing to give up money and prestige for the fantasy of job satisfaction, but I was uncertain that job satisfaction was truly possible.

Fast forward one year four months, and, at least this week, I feel satisfied.  Teaching, though full of its own stresses, moments of failure, long long hours, and public scrutiny, is also immensely satisfying when it goes well.  Breakthroughs with challenging students, sparks of love for learning, and being able to share myself as inspiration to kids that really need it, feels good.  Really good.  My students are smiling more, I am smiling more.  Thursday I actually came home from work with a big smile on my face and that sense of job satisfaction that had seemed so illusive.

Yes, I still feel stressed, and yes, I come home more tired than I ever have from any job, but I also feel passionate for the first time ever about what I do.  This morning, I woke up to read a teaching book of my own volition.  No one is making me read it.  I want to read it.  I am deriving pleasure from reading it.  It is called The Book Whisperer, written by Donnalyn Miller, a teacher that requires her sixth graders, regardless of reading ability, to read forty substantial books of their choosing each year.  I expected to find a book about reading less-than engaging, but instead it has reminded me of my own deep love for reading and ignited my desire to inspire that same love in my students.  It is stuff like this which makes me love teaching.

A recommended read for all teachers!

Even this week, teaching has been a mixture of emotions, sliding back and forth on the job satisfaction scale.  I began the week being observed by teachers from a neighboring school during a few of my less-fine moments, leaving me feeling shitty about my teaching, (for lack of a better adjective).  It is such a strange part of teaching that what works one day may not work for the same students the next.  It also seems to be a common trend that the moments I am the most proud of, the moments I wish the whole world was watching, are also the moments that my revolving door of observers are not present.

I ended the week feeling like I still have so much room to grow but also like what I’m doing is working, a little bit at a time.  The students are beginning to do the right thing on their own, quieting down more quickly as I also grow in my own patience.  I can also feel their engagement and love for learning grow, even if it is still just an emergent sprout in need of a lot of encouragement.  I expect that there will be a thousand more highs and lows, including what seems to be the weekly moment where I ask myself how long I will last as a teacher.  However, a deep, underlying sense of job satisfaction is beginning to emerge that is spilling over into my greater sense of life satisfaction.  I have heard it said that teaching is more than a job, that it is a lifestyle choice.  I am beginning to feel what this means.  Today, at least, it is a satisfying choice.

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Oct 12 2011
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Teaching

Control

I had big plans for my fall break.  I was going to clean my house, get caught up on my to-do list for school, and take a trip with Alex.  Instead, I got sick.  The trip with Alex is still happening, but everything else has shifted into slow motion.  Yes, I have muddled my way through some household chores and crossed off things on my school to-do list, but for the most part I have lazed around the house, watched t.v., surfed the internet, and thrown myself a pity party.  While most of those activities would warrant envy from me on a typical busy day, the reality is that I have a really hard time sitting still.  If I am not engaged in something either socially fun or personally productive, I go stir crazy.

Which makes me wonder, why is it so hard to sit still?  Why do I feel like I always have to be accomplishing something?  Why does “relaxing” not feel like an accomplishment in itself?

Even sitting here now, writing this all down, makes me feel stressed out.  My house, while orderly, is far from clean and is definitely disorganized in places.  Just going out to the backyard with the dog to pick the last of summer’s tomatoes made my anxiety levels rise as I looked around and saw how much work I could be doing out there.  Sitting on the couch now, the disarray of dvds in our entertainment center is making me desperately want to go straighten them out and then dust the entire house…

Earlier, when talking on the phone with my mom, she made the astute observation that maybe I need to become more comfortable with not always having complete control over my classroom.  I know she’s right.  I also know that this connects to my obsession with having a clean house.  Cleaning is something I can control, so a messy house negates this sense of control.  Likewise, being sick pisses me off because I do not feel like I’m in control of my own body.

Now, I’m laughing to myself, because I’ve created an entry that makes me sound like a control freak, but I know that I’m not alone.  I also know that I have gotten better at letting go of some control in my life.  For example, living with Alex has taught me to let some things go, like learning generally not to let the garage and backyard bother me when they’re not as orderly as I’d like.  I have also learned to pick my battles, which is further testament to the fact that I’m not actually a control freak, (or at least not an out-of-control one!).  Moreover, I have to let some things go in order to leave my classroom at a godly hour, otherwise I’d be straightening desks and cleaning surfaces until I was the last teacher left at school!

So, now, I wonder to what degree the desire for control is a bad thing and to what degree it serves a purpose.  It seems like many accomplishments in life are fueled by the self-discipline that accompanies the desire for control.  Likewise, I derive a sense of happiness, superficial or not, from checking items off my list and putting my life into an ordered state.  Even so, I agree with my mom that I need to learn to let go of control more often and become more comfortable in this space.

Accordingly, I am now sitting here trying to embrace being sick.  I am trying to allow myself the space to do nothing, which is terribly difficult for me.

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Sep 29 2011
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Teaching

Honesty.

I’m tired.  I feel beat up by teaching this week.  So far it has been such a roller coaster of happy and frustrating moments.  This week I’m on the frustrating down-swing.  I feel ineffective, which I know must be the root of my dissatisfaction.  I just don’t get why sometimes I feel highly effective and other times I feel like I suck.  I’ve been told time and time again that this is what it feels like to be a first-year teacher, but sometimes it is hard to remember what it feels like when it’s good.  I’m nowhere close to throwing in the towel, I am just feeling frustrated and think it’s important to be honest about it.

Even with this feeling, I don’t regret my decision to teach.  It has changed my life.  It has made me tougher and given me back a lot of my self confidence in dealing with people that went missing for awhile.  It has gotten me out of working in a windowless cube for eleven hours a day, (not that I’m working less, because really I’m working more, and for far less money).  I now know what the weather is like outside and get to actually be outside during daylight hours.  I get to watch the seasons change and hardly sit in front of a computer.  I get to talk to people all the time, young and old.  I finally use my Spanish.  I get to be a dork and the kids love me all the more for it.  Even if my hours are long, I get some flexibility in choosing when to spend them, and I get more than three weeks off a year.  Most days I feel like I’m making an important difference in the world, even if it is hard.

So with that little dose of honesty, I will gather myself together and do it all again tomorrow.

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