The Choice is Yours...

Teachers are awful.

Ok, so that's a bit strong, let me try again. Teachers are awful at some things, like practicing what we preach.

Each morning at my school we hear the phrase, "Make it a great day or not, the choice is yours." and we deep down inside hope that the kids hear that, understand the message, and apply the principle: think about your actions and words, how they effect you and others, and choose to do what is good and right because it's the right thing to do.

Do you know how awful I am at doing this?

It's so easy for me to look at the day once the kids have finally packed up their bags and made their way down to the buses and think about all the crappy stuff that happened. How so-and-so didn't complete his or her work, or how they talked back, put forth such little effort, and trust me the list goes on and on. As easy as it is to simply think these things, it's even easier for me to complain to anyone around about all the things that went wrong in the day.

Now, I'm not saying that you should keep all of these frustrations pent up inside and not share them. It's important to be able to be honest with yourself and to avoid telling everyone you see that life is just fine. But it's equally important to gauge how much of what comes out of your mouth is negative versus positive.

Why is it that finding the positive is so stinkin' hard?

Teachers (ok, not just teachers, but since I am one and work with a bunch of them, this is the group I'm going to pick on) are faced with the dilemma of finding the positive, and choosing to do so, on a daily basis. What makes the situation even harder for teachers is that we are all too willing to feed off of each other's frustrations, add our own, and sometimes even try to compete with each other in how crappy a student or class we have in our rooms this day or year.

Why is it that by talking about the negative stuff provides such a good conversation piece, whereas talking about the positive doesn't ever last very long?

I find that a lot of times, the conversations I have with anyone who will listen about my day very similar to watching more than an hour of the news. Eventually all the stories sound the same, and none of them are all that great. In fact the most interesting ones are usually the most depressing ones. I get frustrated with the news casters and often find myself yelling at them, tell me some good news!

The choice is theirs after all... they're the ones who get to decide what to talk about.

The choice is theirs...

The choice is mine.

The choice is yours.