It’s that time of the year. Teachers are busy, busy, busy! Christmas concerts, hyper children, rushing to tie up units prior to the two week break. Busy, busy, busy! Honestly though, when isn’t the school year busy? It’s part of the job of educators and it’s why we need the holidays that we receive and still have a high burn out rate. It’s the absolute joy of my job to travel to different schools and get to see the great things going on and, without fail, there are certain times of the year when there seems to be a down turn in the energy teachers have left. Christmas is one of those seasons.
If we allow ourselves to, we can get to a place where we actually buy into an underlying “woe is me” mentality. Rather than celebrating the successes of our students we can get caught in the trap of the tired. We begin to hear those little voices in our head. “I seem to be doing all the work around here.” “My administrators aren’t appreciating how much work I am doing.” “All these kids care about is their technology.” and those little voices can lure you in and, quite frankly, drain your energy. I know. It’s happened to me before, I get it.
This is a time where we need to really step back and ask ourselves why we got into this gig in the first place. Was it the holidays? Not likely, it wouldn’t sustain you long enough. Was it the Money? Not likely, we do alright but we’re not living the high life. Was it the constant praise of society? Not likely, well we do get praised, we get the other end too. My guess is that most of us got into this profession to help kids. We felt like we had something to offer the next generation to be better. We felt we could help the kids in our care be not simply the best in the world at something but the best for the world.
So, in light of all the craziness of the season and the challenges of the job, remember that you can make a huge difference in the world by inspiring and educating the next generation. That’s a real gift of this job. if we embrace that, we can get through anything . . . even Christmas concert.
Keep on inspiring!
Dave
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