Day To Day Joy

Day to day joy must be there for you to be an effective anything in a public school, because it is absolutely essential in developing relationships and in giving you a buoyancy that will last, in the face of much that is drudgery and mundane routine. There is always something or someone to laugh about or with through the course of most school days, and there is an excitement in connecting with students when they do well, when they understand a concept, when they show growth of any kind. I enjoy looking at yearbooks and do comparisons on how different the freshmen Joe Bob is from the senior Joe Bob. There is so much kinetic energy on a high school campus that if you don't feel it, you are either numb or in the wrong place. Kids sense this immediately, and they will very carefully, irrevocably, shut you down if you don't possess it. Thankfully, I haven't had that happen to me often, but I do see it more clearly now that I am outside of the classroom when I am talking to kids about their teachers. They will run through a wall for someone who cares about them and can convey their job about them. They will go through the motions or fall far short for someone who simply shows up and glowers and reads the PowerPoint. Finding those moments of humor, exhibiting that passion for your subject, having a easy manner with students may be straining and take a lot of work, but the end result can't be more satisfying. And, you won't have good days, because something will go wrong when you are on the way to work or you might be struggling with the flu and still trudging on, or somebody on the front row might get sarcastic with you, but your ability to keep "performing" will speak volumes to your students about fortitude and resilience in life.