Joy
Do you remember the song, Joy in My Heart?
It starts like this: “I’ve got that joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart.”
So many teachers and students do not feel the joy down in their hearts these days.
It is a struggle now more than ever for everyone because of the pandemic. Joy seems to have left the classroom like “Elvis has left the building”. Especially at this time of the school year, there is a prevalent feeling of “the music has stopped, and the concert is over!” A mood of “I’m done!”
I won’t go into detail and describe the atmosphere and culture of current feelings in the classroom because I think everyone already knows and understands what it is like.
I want to focus more on how we can dig deep down in our hearts and find that joy again.
This is what Maya Angelou has to say about joy:
“Joy is a freedom. It helps a person to find his/her own liberation. The person who is joyous takes responsibility for the time he/she takes up and the space that he/she occupies.You share it! When you continue to give it away, you will still have so much more of it!”
There is an overwhelming cry from the hearts of teachers to be free. “I just want to teach.” has become an ironic cliché in education. Teachers feel so burdened and overwhelmed and unappreciated and unsupported and….(name the emotion).
So, how can we bring forth more joy into the classroom, and why is it so important?
