As a teacher, many days you wake up thinking you’re going to
change the world, and other days, well, you just try to survive. It’s so easy to let one thing ruin your day. As kids come and go throughout the day, they
fail to realize that your day has unfortunately been impacted prior to them
seeing you. They don’t realize that you
ran out of hot water in the shower, spilled coffee all over yourself in the
morning, have a sore back from the way you slept, already were reprimanded for
something random, have 20+ emails to attend to, extra-curriculars to manage,
home-bound students that we must write out extremely detailed lessons for, and
all of the other daily work and students that we face.
I always remember showing up to classes that I usually
enjoyed, only to find out that the teacher was in a bad mood. As far as we were concerned, these teachers
had no need to be in a bad mood, and honestly, we hadn’t done anything, so why
is the teacher less than friendly to us today?
When my kids come in, my face is often very readable. If they ask me if I’m having a bad day, I
tell them the truth, and if they ask why, I do my best to explain to them
without giving them details on the matter.
It’s only fair to them to know what to expect from their teachers so
that they can adjust their attitudes accordingly. While it’s not fair that we let our moods
impact our teaching, it is an inevitable situation. You do your best to put your happy face on,
you calmly remind students to get back on track, and think twice before you say
anything, but after about the 20th time you repeat the same thing
over and over, you’re sure to lose your cool temperament. It’s hard.
My daily struggle is keeping my cool, not taking out my feelings or
emotions on students (even though they are to partially blame some days). They are with us (or in my case) for ninety
minutes every day. Yes, high school students
will always try to get a rise out of you, but they honestly don’t want to ruin
your day – they simply fail to realize how much they impact your day. Regardless of this fact, they still have an
uncanny ability to do so. Unfortunately,
not only do we feed off of their moods, but they feed off of ours as teachers.
I have learned the more that I get upset – not even
necessarily with them – the more frustrated and agitated they become with the
teacher. Every day is a constant battle –
I don’t want to let their moods rub off on me, just as I don’t want to my mood rub off on them. On my way
home today as I was driving, I couldn’t help but tell myself, “The day is
over. Let it go. Breathe.
Quit being upset. Tomorrow is a
new day. Today is over. Let it go.”
These moments with myself are the most crucial, yet difficult part of my
day. As a teacher I think the best thing
to do is separate your own life from your school life. Without a doubt every teacher will take home
the emotional baggage of the day, but it’s important to leave as much behind as
you can. It is the nature of teachers to
care, empathize, and problem-solve, but to maintain sanity, it is imperative to
recollect and decompress. Although I’ve
not been teaching for long, it is easy to understand why the burn-out rate of
teachers is so high. It’s a stressful
job and the inability to let things go will suffocate you quicker than one can
realize. Whether or not you teach, I
think this lesson is true in life – you need to take each day as it comes,
learn from it, and let it go, or else risk losing your sanity. It sounds like the easiest thing to do, but
the more I focus on it, the more I only realize just how difficult it is and
how much practice that it takes.
