Love
This is a really, REALLY tough time of year for teachers and students.
They come back from Spring Break only to face testing and admin in overdrive and red-lining their list of demands to “wrap things up” for this school year. *note – the definition of redlining is: “drive with (a car engine) at or above its rated maximum rpm or revolutions per minute”
Yep…sounds about right! Teachers and students are being driven to their maximum limits.
As a result, anxiety, anger, frustration, shaming, blaming, screaming and all other kinds of negative and “ugly” human behaviors are raging through schools.
And in a pandemic… well, that is just adding gas on an already out of control, raging fire!
So, what can teachers, students, parents, admin and everyone do right now?
Remember that love conquers all…love makes the world go round (revolutions)…all you need is love…
and the epitome of all quotes on love…
Love is love is love is love is love…. such simple, yet powerful words spoken by Lin-Manuel Miranda at the Tony Awards in 2016 following the Pulse Night Club shootings in Orlando, FL.
You can watch the speech here, but I’ll warn you…have a box of tissue handy!
This gets me every.single.time because it touches a place deep in my teacher heart about loving ALL children just they way they are, as Mister Rogers taught us.
Love them ALL…no matter what! There are days when it is so hard to do this in the classroom because of too many demands made on us as teachers.
Too much stress due to too many demands.
Too many emotions to process and deal with because of too many demands.
Too much testing and judging and shaming and blaming and… you get the picture.
Everything is too much, and yet not enough. It echoes through the halls and permeates the walls of every classroom, that is, if we will allow it to do so!!!
There are preventive measures, however, which are at the heart and spirit of teaching. I will be exploring some of these preventive measures and powerful antidotes in my upcoming blog posts. I actually started with the last post on kindness. You can check it out here.
What does LOVE look like in the classroom?
