Happy New Year!

Author

Merissa Sadler-Holder
January 24, 2025

🫧 Something magical happens when we step away from our bubble. 🫧 

Whether its a break from a school community, LinkedIn community or even our own country, we are reminded of other perspectives and struggles and tend to return more grounded.

Recently I took a short break from LinkedIn and my newsletter to spend time with my family during the holidays and it was a wonderful break.

When I was gearing up to start again the wildfires in California shook me to the core. Many of you know that I live in Los Angeles and was about 1.5 miles from the Eaton fire. The last thing I had on my mind was AI, or even teaching for that matter.

Altadena is a city located just next door to the small community of La Canada, where I taught for 13 years. It's a pretty wealthy area so many of the teachers cannot afford to live there and opted to live in nearby Altadena. My husband and I even considered it.

I learned that 23 of my former colleagues lost their homes in the Eaton fire. It was and is truly catastrophic. These incredible teachers are going through the unimaginable.

I learned that my teacher bestie, Gayle Nichols-Ali, lost everything in the Altadena fires. Read more of her story in this recent People Magazine article.

I learned that the school where I gave my first AI presentation as a consultant was lost to the fires. I learned that the district I served as an educator had 250 students effected by the fires. It’s been a hard month.

If you would like to learn more about how to help the teachers and staff of La Canada who lived in Altadena, please click this link. There you will find GofundMe links and Amazon Wishlists as well as charitable organizations helping.

With all of this going on I debated on taking a planned trip to Istanbul during MLK weekend. It was a special planned trip to celebrate our 5th wedding anniversary. I would be lying if I said I didn't feel immense guilt or placed extra pressure on myself to "return to work as normal".

I finally told myself that this is a wonderful travel opportunity and AI will still be there when I get back.

So I packed my bags and spent a long weekend with a group of 30 educators. These teachers lead educational travel trips with students. We loved exploring the beautiful city together.

Sidenote, I’m a veteran Educational Travel Leader and have lead many trips abroad with students. If you are curious about leading one, please don’t hesitate to send me an email directly at [email protected]

Of course, during the trip, AI became a topic of dinner conversation and it was great to just listen to them. Truly sit back and listen.

During this break, I was reminded that teaching is hard, but even harder during a crisis. Whether teachers and admin are putting out fires both physically or metaphorically, AI is but a distant thought.

And it's ok to take a break. AI will still be here when I get back.

Missed you all....and would you look at that...AI is still here. 🙃 

I'll leave you all with some fun photos of my trip while I prepare for next week’s newsletter!

❤️ Merissa Sadler-Holder

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I love reading your feedback, it helps me design effective solutions for others. I respond to all my emails. Just hit reply to this email. Rooting for you and your students! Love, M.

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