How often are we wound tightly by the seriousness of our work? How often are we so taken with the gravity of the job that we forget to smile? How often do we suppress the urge to let go?
When I first began teaching, I did not laugh with my students much.
I thought the oft repeated adage “don’t let them see you smile until Christmas” good advice. For a very long time, I tried to rein in the impulse to laugh, to joke, to be humorous. Later when I became an administrator, I thought it all the more important to be serious – to treat administrative jobs with as much gravitas as they deserved.
And, for a very long time, the very last thing I would laugh at publically was myself.
True story: I once applied for a job I did not get which was kind of a big deal.
I had served a year as acting principal of my alma mater, taking over the role after the individual who preceded me was let go in late May. It was not a “parting of the ways” that was terribly well orchestrated or planned out. Though I was hopeful to have a principal job at some point in my career, this was not the way I thought the position would come to me.
Nonetheless, in the early spring of the ensuing year, I applied for the actual job, eager to get the term “Acting” removed from the title, anxious to hold the position without asterisk. I interviewed. I thought I had done well. I received signals indicating I was the horse to beat. I heard from my direct supervisor that I could rest easy.
That is not the way things went.
Some of the hardest months of my professional life were those immediately following that decision.
In truth – and this is not hubris – most people thought I would receive the position. When I did not, there was some surprise and the faculty had to be told. I thought they needed to be told by my supervisor. He agreed and we determined that the faculty would be informed at the normally scheduled faculty meeting which was only two days after I was told I would not be the principal.
We agreed that I would wait in the hallway outside the library where the meeting was happening while he shared the news and I would join the meeting after he was done. We calculated that 10 minutes would be more than enough time for the news to be conveyed and, when 600 seconds had passed, I opened the library doors and walked through them.
Perhaps you are familiar with know the electronic sensors most libraries have at their doors to prevent books and materials from being taken without being checked out. Our library had these and, while I was not carrying a book of any kind, those sensors decided that announcing my presence to the gathered faculty at that particular moment immediately after they heard I would not receive the principal position for the coming year was the right thing to do.
I entered. The alarms blared. The faculty turned to see what was causing the sound and there I was.
“Perfect.” I said, laughing. “That’s perfect.”
And it was.
I laughed. I laughed loudly and deeply. I laughed perhaps the most real laugh I had been able to muster since hearing I was not selected for the job because – what the hell? – it was pretty damned funny.
When I laughed, many of my colleagues followed suit.
What we do is serious work. We hold the future of children in our hands. We are trusted to do hard and good work with our students. This is a pursuit none of us should take for granted or lightly. But how often are we wound tightly by the seriousness of our work? How often are we so taken with the gravity of the job that we forget to smile? How often do we suppress the urge to let go?
The question should be: how often, each and every day, do we laugh.
And how often do we allow others to laugh at and with us?
As teachers and administrators, we have to give our colleagues and our students our permission to laugh because what we do is serious and it often is hard and challenging. We are, in fact, shepherding the future.
It is a pretty awesome responsibility.
Let us not make it a grave one, as well.
Let us laugh and let us allow people to laugh with us.
And laugh at us.