Together...

I have discovered in life that while sometimes it seems easiest to go things alone, we truly are stronger when we stick together. Think about it: one person cleaning up the litter on a beach can only do so much, but a group of people can at least double the positive results.

I was recently contacted by 31 Bits and asked if I was interested in joining their TOGETHER campaign. Since March is Women's History month and Friday 8-March is International Women's Day, they've created this campaign to remind humans that together, we're better. Since 31 Bits is a fair trade company (based in Uganda and Bali) that has a strong belief in supporting women (and one another), I was honored to be asked to help spread awareness of this campaign by simply wearing their beautiful and dainty hand-stamped "TOGETHER" bracelet!

To support the ideals at the root of this campaign, I wanted to share a story from this week in my full-time job as a special education teacher. I ended up spending my planning period subbing for a class that had 30 students (about half of them were students who have special education plans and the other half does not). There are usually two teachers in this class, and both of them were gone, so it was just me alone as the human in charge. By the time I got to the classroom, two other classes had already tornadoed through the room. There were scraps of paper all over the floor, calculators all over the place, discarded worksheets wadded up in the desks. My first reaction was to be appalled that the previous two sub teachers had allowed the room to get to that state and then did nothing about it and my second reaction was that if I could get enough of the kids to work together, it would really only take about 2 minutes-tops to clean things up.

Luckily, the half of the class that receive special education services receive those services from me and they knew how I operated (I refuse to let them out of my classroom until they've left it in at least equal condition to the way it was when they arrived) and they jumped to action. Their actions led the students who had never spoken a word to me in their lives to pick up one or two scraps as well.

It was something small, but together, we were able to improve our environment for the time that we were going to be sharing it together.

... now imagine what the would would be like if all of the humans stuck together and supported one another/supported world-changing causes together...

... yeah... that does sound like a wonderful place, doesn't it?