Stay Positive

Today was another terrible horrible no good very bad day.

Students being disrespectful to me, others, themselves, cursing, terrible language, no work getting done, not a lot of learning happening... the list goes on. This is the first time that I almost lost it. I've cried before in school... but this time was almost the final straw.

On my drive home I didn't know whether to scream or cry. Instead of doing either, I decided to indulge and stop at Dunkin Donuts on the way home. Pumpkin donut and caramel iced latte.

As I drove, I reflected and thought.

(I've been wanting to type out some more posts dealing with the things God has been showing me, but I thought that this one might be more therapeutic at the moment.)

Not only has my advisory been ridiculous the past few weeks, but I have been more aware of the negative things going on. I zoom in on those things, which makes it just stressful and not any better for anyone. So as I was driving and reflecting on the terrible parent phone call that I had just made, I thought about how often I call parents for good things. And then I thought about how often I even feel that there are good things going on. There are very few moments when I've even smiled in school the past few weeks.

So I made a decision. Our advisory mantra is "Work hard. Stay positive. Move forward." I feel like I have been struggling, alongside my students, with staying positive. Lately my first reaction is almost always negative. This blog post is one of my solutions.

I am going to do my best to start blogging more about the good things that are happening. Even if they might be few and far between, I need to start sharing those more with people instead of the bad.

So here's the good that happened amongst the chaos of today:

• Several students were just as frustrated with the disrespect and the talking during advisory. Even some of the students who caused most of the problems would every once in awhile chime in with a serious, "C'mon guys, she's trying to talk."


• After I almost freaked out at them I had a student ask, "Nichole, are you ok?"


• While the majority of my students were participating in the weekly yoga session or doing independent work (or disrupting the weekly yoga session), two students sat and diligently got work completed in my classroom.


• We decided that this week instead of saying "Shut up!" to one another, we would use a more positive phrase like, "Please be quiet." Several students started using it by the end of the day (granted, they get positive points which turn into money that they can use as an advisory, but hey, it's a start)


• All of my students were present. (Even though one went home sick)

Not too much, but enough to keep me going.

I'm going to start practicing what I'm preaching to my kids and stay positive.