Sena's back and our adventures begin

We spent the last half of last week in Washington DC, helping Sena move back to CT. She's home again, which feels so nice, until she moves closer to Yale in August.

Meanwhile, we'll be having some adventures in Europe, starting tomorrow!!! First stop is Zurich, so stay tuned. I'll post stuff having to do with my grant on my Instagram account @ms.m_fft

Peace 

The way you look at things

I've been contemplating the quote: "When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change" (Max Planck).

How do we change the way we look at things? Some answers that come to mind: through our own experience and empathy with others' experiences, through direct communication as well as movies, books, art, and all kinds of learning.

Right now, for me, watching Summer Strike and any of the Asian movies/anime that I like is changing the way I look at things. How? By helping me discern and physically see differently; placing my attention on things I don't normally notice as much.

Learning physics also allows me to look at things differently. Travelling too. Finally, going through difficult, unpleasant experiences has allowed me to see things differently. This is not something I purposely sought out, but it did bring me a level of understanding I didn't have before, and through practicing meditation, I'm hoping to use that understanding and those hard experiences in a good way.

Peace

Sumer break and news

Dear friends,

It's been a while since I've updated this blog and a lot has happened, so I will try to summarize it in small chunks. Today, I will start with a little anecdote from school and then tell you about my summer grant.

All in all, this has been my best school year ever. I taught Physics, Aerospace Engineering and AP Research. I've had some amazing students, and although I, like everyone else, felt tired at the end of the school year and ready for summer break, I also genuinely felt sad at the prospects of not seeing my students regularly any more. One example of why this has been so rewarding is this one student, a very bright and kind Junior. He told me that until taking physics, he thought that school was useless and didn't see a point in it, but in our physics class he discovered something he was really good at and interested in. He decided to pursue Engineering Physics in college and will be applying next year. He also said that his family is really happy for him discovering this. 

I have other examples which I might share later, but for now, I just want to say how grateful I am and how happy this makes me.

And now, about my grant: earlier this year I applied for a Funds For Teachers (FFT) grant and was awarded it. I will be traveling for 3 weeks in July, through Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, Romania and Turkey, studying sustainable and equitable transportation systems, including aviation, trains, and other means of urban/rural mobility. I will also be taking a sustainable aviation course at Delft University (online), bringing insights and experiences from all this back to my students. I am super excited about it and in the stages of planning it all right now. If you would like to follow my travels and experiences, I created an Instagram account to capture highlights specific to this grant, and you can find it under @ms.m_fft (it also gets posted to my FB account, under Raluca Mocanu).

I will end here for now, and follow up in a future post with more updates. I hope that you are all doing well as well :)

Peace