What mountains are you willing to move to get where you’re going?
How is life inviting you to embody what you haven’t yet dared to?

This song + video is my creative response to working for two months as an art sub at J.W. Eater Jr. High — the very same hallways I walked as a teeniebop some twenty-odd years earlier. As someone who thrives in flow and connection, submitting to public school bells & rules was sometimes an uncomfortable stretch — but so worth it to get to meet the young people of my village! I dream of learning communities where trauma healing is priority, where pLAy, critical thinking, autonomy, and intuition are skillsets valued as much as reading/writing/’rithmetic, and where circle process, song+dance, and nature connection (food we grow?!) are the glue that holds this process together. Sticking with the choice to sub definitely forced me to *grow beyond* my stuck points and opened up powerful love and humbling insights —- as attempting even baby steps in bringing our loftiest visions into slow clunky physical reality always do.

After the principal’s school pep assembly highlighting the district’s motto “Grow Beyond”, a song immediately started to land in the dreamy doing-the-dishes time of the evening…… I shared it with my classes and it stuck, and began to grow legs and images and beats and ideas. Michael Linder made it into a real song with harmonies and instruments and a lovely snippet of Stevie Wonder’s “Smile Please.” The motto underscores the building’s own process of renovation (and the challenge it is to run school amidst construction), so i wove in sneak peeks of the new locker rooms and coming-soon innovation center to assure the kids ~ it is happening.

Lovingly shared as a parting (meeting?) gift with this school community::: thank you for opening my heart and getting me out of hermit studio mode xoxoxo and, as seeds planted for further restorative work here in Rantoul our home.