Learner. Human. Joyologist.
I ignored all of my instincts to do it the way more experienced teachers thought it "should" be done. And we all suffered. My students suffered. And I suffered. No one was having fun, and as a result, my students didn't learn as much as they could have learned. They merely complied.
The world is filled with enough that makes us feel heavy and overwhelmed. The work is the work - whether we enjoy it or not. So, how might we make it feel a bit more light and breezy?
My self-improvement gremlins have been running WILD. They have taken over my mind and thought life, and they are at the strongest at night when I look back at my day and what I have and have not accomplished. These gremlins encourage me to jump on social media and see the progress other people are making toward their goals. They encourage me to obsess over better plans and approaches and when they are at their strongest, they encourage me to buy things on the internet that will get me closer to the progess I desire. New water bottles, new meal plans and recipes, new notebooks for new ideas, new books to read, new clothes, NEW NEW NEW NEW NEW.
Perhaps we can achieve great things at a higher level with more finesse, when we prioritize our inner groundedness.
Imagine how the world would change if we stopped to notice what's going right more often.
The hard truth is that some of what is stressing us out we've chosen for ourselves.
And showing people how much they matter is the foundation of education.
When I close my eyes, I find peace in remembering the sounds of the ocean...moreso than in the sounds of other people's affirmations.
But until that happens, until our school schedules are changed to better honor the humanity of both students and educators, we need to find a way to be OK. To be more than OK. To be at peace.
Children become adults who carry how we made them feel in their hearts for the rest of their lives. That's powerful. To matter that deeply in the lives of others. To matter that deeply in someone's future. We can be daunted by that or we can see it has an opportunity to be the good.
MEGHAN LAWSON 