Teach & Serve III, No. 4
Optimism Can Be a Choice… and It Should Be
August 30, 2017
Our work is with kids. Our work is for the future. What could be better – or inspire more optimism – than that?
We work with kids.
Let us never forget that we work with kids.
I know that seems like a ridiculous directive, remembering we work with kids, but in the midst of the booting up duties at the beginning of the school year, as we set up our LMS’s and our electronic grade books, as we go from meeting-to-meeting and review policies and procedures, the fact that we do all this to get to the good part – the working with kids part – can be lost in the haze.
We should not lose sight of this.
Whether we are teachers or administrators, our work is with students, with kids.
And kids are exciting and excitable. And they are young (at least they are younger than we are). And they are looking at us. All. The. Time.
It is all too easy at the start of the year to be weighed down by the pressure of the work, by the immensity of all the we needs must do and all that we are asked and directed to do. It is all too easy to set high goals for ourselves – and setting those high goals is, of course, critical! – but to see those goals as barriers to cross not benchmarks to achieve. It is all too easy to come into the year tired. Worn out. Pessimistic about the months ahead.
Guard against pessimism.
Remember, the students are watching us. All. The. Time.
In a society that rains pessimism down on them, would it not be refreshing – for them – if they did not receive the same from us? Would it not be wonderful for them to receive from us the reverse?
Optimism is a choice and choosing it over pessimism is a choice that we can and should make over-and-over again.
Our work is with kids. Our work is for the future. What could be better – or inspire more optimism – than that?
It is our choice to give into the morass of pessimism and our choice to embrace the freedom of optimism.
Which would you rather bring to your classroom and context this year?