A Broken Tooth, a Changed Person, and a Broken System

In December a piece of a filling broke and left a decent size hole in my tooth. Luckily it didn't hurt on a day to day basis and I could still eat, but I had to adjust how I chew.

Even before the break I favored chewing on my left side because it just felt so awkward to chew on the right side. Maybe the break was trying to warn me? The break made it a much more necessary choice to avoid making the break worse.

I got it fixed this Tuesday and on Wednesday night I comfortably chewed on both sides of my mouth for the first time in recent memory. It was a strange experience because I know I used to chew on both sides, but last night it felt like the first time. Also, my mouth naturally took over and made it happen, when for the last 30ish days it was doing something completely different.

This experience got me thinking about my life as a woman of color. What have I changed about myself because of circumstances outside of my control? How often do we have a moment when we realized we've changed? What allows for moments to happen that give us the ability to rethink what we're doing or how we feel about it?  Are there warning signs I never noticed? How do I create more opportunities to reflect without the dental damage? Will 'muscle memory' allow me to go back to things I wish hadn't changed?

As I continued to marinate on this, I thought about where some  'breaks' may have happened in my life. While some were fairly recent, my mind drifted back to college and my K12 experience. The education system in both apparent and hidden ways changes students. Some changes are for the better, and others are not. 

In this situation with my tooth, I'm privileged to have health insurance. However, when education affects our students, what resources do they have to help them address situations like this in their lives?

This isn't something I can solve in one blog, but I wanted to get these thoughts out of my head and into the world. In light of 2019, more people have been forced to see the inequities that exist in education, and I believe this is part of it. It's cliche but people are right when they say we have the opportunity to reimagine education based on all we've learned during remote and hybrid learning. So I'll be continuing to think about this experience, and I'm interested to hear our thoughts too.

I hope there will be more attention brought to questions like this. Just because you get used to something as it is, doesn't mean that's what it should be.