Sometimes
I feel imprisoned in my school. There is so much commotion, so much movement, so many voices, loud, trying to be heard. I have to struggle and strain my voice just to get a word in with my seventh graders. It makes me want to fall to my knees in tears, and the thought of doing it again in the next period or the next day breaks my heart right in the middle of class.
Sometimes, one can just tell that it will be a bad day. Take today, for example. I forgot my lunch, a rock dinged my windshield on the Beltway, the copy machine needed lots of coaxing and TLC before it would work, the custodial staff had completely rearranged my desks, the school was sweltering, and I basically decided it would be a bad day before the children even arrived. And so it was a bad day, or at least not a good day, and certainly not the day I had hoped would begin my final push of the year.
Those days for me can only be remedied by taking the time to appreciate natural sources of happiness. I spent a good portion of this evening ruminating on my perfectly happy life outside of the classroom. I went outside and let the unseasonably warm air wrap me up like a cozy blanket; it actually felt as though it were physically comforting me. I also chose to think about the tiny things that show me how lucky and loved I am, like the pictures of me displayed in all of my aunts’ homes, my entire family’s unfaltering interest in my life, my mom telling me that my daddy - gasp - had already picked out a birthday gift for me, and so on and so forth. Lots of times I do not even realize how much these small gestures mean to me until I allow myself to consider them. I feel a sudden urge to deliver handwritten thank you letters for some of these things that have become so customary in my life that I do not even think of them as special.
Allowing myself to get lost in my own world of thoughts at my earliest convenience each and every day, and especially on the bad ones, is one of the things that has been the most helpful in preserving my sanity as I crawl though my first year of teaching. Over the summer, my mentor teacher gave me a mug that had the following, probably sadly cliched quote emblazoned on its surface:
“Peace. It does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart.”
I am working on being calm in my heart, because I am certainly in the midst of all of those daily at my school.
And tomorrow is a new day.
