Celebrating, Appreciating, and Keeping Perspective in the Classroom

What's going on everybody, I hope this finds you striving and thriving and doing absolutely amazing. My name is Brian Martin. I'm a second grade teacher and hosted the teaching champions podcast. It was a good week. But it definitely was a busy one. There was a faculty meeting, my class had a field trip, and we had a spring concert this week. And this week was also filled with a lot of reminders to celebrate, appreciate and keep things in perspective. And throughout this year, I've been reading Elena Aguilar has book armor, and she breaks each chapter down into months. And with each month comes a different way that we can build resilience. And for me, she talks about building resilience through celebration, and appreciation. And she says that when we take time to celebrate, and we take time to appreciate, we strengthen ourselves socially and emotionally. And when we make it a point to celebrate the great things that are happening each and every single day. And when we take time to appreciate others and ourselves. Our world changes. And this week, it brought so much for me for the first time. In two years, there was a concert for the second graders in their families at my school, and you want to talk about some special moments. Take time to go and listen to a primary concert. The students, they come to school all dressed up, the boys are rocking some button up shirts, and the young ladies all have their dresses on. And their hair's all done up. And you see them up on the risers. And it's beautiful. But you want to know what the outs is special. Because you stand back and you look around. And you see their parents and their grandparents, they're watching their child intently last in the moment, grinning from ear to ear. It's such a beautiful moment. And the students, they got up there and they crushed it. And at one point, they whipped out their kazoos and they broke it down a little. It was one of those moments that you just needed to grab on to. And when we came back to the classroom, some of my champions were so fired up before the concert, many of them they had expressed how nervous they were. But when we got back to the classroom, they were giving me high fives and talking about how awesome it was. And they were learning a very important lesson about celebrating themselves about facing those butterflies, and the reward that you can get when you do something that makes you uneasy. And they were also on cloud nine, because they saw the love and excitement on their parents and their grandparents faces. They saw their loved ones celebrating them. Now, a school concerts a pretty big event, then something like that doesn't happen every day. But there are small things that are happening each and every single day. That are we're celebrating their small wins happening inside our classroom every day. There's aha moments. There's small breakthroughs that we have with our champions. There's moments where you're champions, they make you step back, and be amazed at what they can do. Finding those reasons to celebrate you're champions for their achievement, for their effort, for their breakthroughs, for their moments of kindness. It brings joy to the class, when we celebrate that. It helps create a positive environment. It lists our champions up and it also lifts us up. And you shouldn't just be celebrating your students. It's important that you take time to celebrate yourself that you celebrate those small wins that you had in the classroom and in your life. This year hasn't been easy. There's been tough moments for everyone. But you made your students have learned your students have grown You've made your students feel seen, feel heard, feel valued, you've done that. So be sure to celebrate yourself right now, make it a habit to take just a minute a day, at the very least, and remind yourself of the things that you accomplish that day. Because your day is made up of lots and lots of small wins. And we have a tendency to brush those limbs off, because we don't see them as big. But if you take time to recognize those small wins, what happens is you build your confidence. It helps you feel good about your day. It helps you build momentum. And it's important to always remember, little by little, a little becomes a lot. So when we stack those small wins on top of each other, when we build that momentum, before we know it, we're going to accomplish those goals that we set out to do. So take time to celebrate others, make it a habit to celebrate yourself as well. And along with celebrating ourselves and those around us, we can strengthen our resiliency, through appreciation. And Elena Aguilar says that a gratitude practice can be like that secret sauce to building resilience. And when you build a gratitude practice, you heighten your awareness of the amazing things that are happening all around you, you strengthen social connections, and you deepen that emotional intelligence, and your self confidence. So take that time to appreciate yourself and appreciate what others do as well. You know, it's easy to recognize the good that you do on those good days, those days, where everything seems to be just going right. But remind yourself that on those days, when things don't seem to be going smoothly, that there was someone who, when they woke up in the morning, couldn't wait to see you. They couldn't wait to be in your presence. And sometimes we see the fact that we have and others. And sometimes it's not as visible. But you play a huge role in their life. And we can build our resilience by showing appreciation for others. When we take that time to see the good in others, it affects us in a positive way. And we can show our appreciation by sending tax writing notes, writing an email, or just walking up to someone and letting them know the difference that they made. Think about how you feel when someone went out of their way to offer you some kind words of appreciation, it feels good. So why not pass that up? Why not point out to someone the great things that others are doing. Because one kind act of appreciation can truly change the trajectory of someone's day. And you can also do a silent appreciation. Maybe don't send that text or maybe you don't write that note. But instead, you take a moment and silently to yourself. You express your appreciation for someone and you just put it out into the universe. And as the school year is starting to wind down, I find myself trying to appreciate my students a little bit more in trying to appreciate my friends that are retiring at the end of this year a little bit more. I try and make it a practice to cherish those moments that I interact with them. Those moments when I walked by my friends classrooms, and I hear them teaching a lesson, or I hear them laughing with their students. The days are always so busy, we're always in a rush and we miss out. But for myself, taking that time being aware that the school year is coming to a close. It helps me embrace each day and the end of the year. It brings so much excitement and everyone is ready for a little break. But what I do know is when next year starts up, I'm going to be missing my friends that are retiring and I'm going to be missing this crew that I get to spend my day with this week also brought But dose of healthy perspective for me, people in general, myself included in this can blow things out of proportion, we can make things. So unbearable and difficult before we even truly understand them, or before we look at them from different angles. And I was reminded of this this week, I was sitting in a faculty meeting, and is that time of year where we start talking about the different policies and changes that are going to be coming our way in the fall. And my administrator begins to roll out one of those changes, that has to happen. And you could just feel the energy in the room drop, and there was a little bit of grumbling. And I'm one that's not very vocal on a faculty meeting is I'm not trying to prolong that meeting in any way. But I can tell you internally, I felt the uncomfortableness, I can tell you that my mind automatically raced to why this was not a good thing. And I could feel myself internally becoming a little agitated. And then one of my colleagues spoke up. And she said, maybe we need to look at this a little different. Maybe this gives us a chance to look outside the box. Maybe this leads to new and better opportunities. And you know what? She's right. It was a mic drop moment for. And it was a reminder to me about perspective. Before even sitting down with this new change, and trying to explore ways to make it work, or see all the possibilities that could come from it, my mind shut it down. And I came up with 100 different ways, and 100 different reasons why this was a bad thing. Within literally, one sec, I shouted down before even taking a minute. To truly think about this. Change is hard. It's difficult, is uncomfortable. And we're hardwired to automatically see what's wrong with something. And it's important that we understand our emotions, be cognizant of our thoughts. And before we make judgment calls on things, we should take time to recenter ourselves. Sometimes this means taking a few deep breaths. Sometimes it means stepping away, and revisiting it, looking at it from a different angle. Ultimately, this policy is mandated and it has to happen. It's not up for debate. But what is up for debate is how I approach this, how I choose to look at the energy that I have about it. And we also get to choose the voices that we listen to. Do we join in and participate with all the grumbling and talking about why something won't work? Or do we listen to that voice of the individual who bravely speaks up and reminds us to think outside the box to see the possibilities to see the potential is weak. Remember, if you want to build resilience, look to celebrate, appreciate and keep that healthy perspective. And my challenge for you this week is to celebrate something every day. celebrate your successes. Celebrate your colleague, celebrate your students. Oprah Winfrey once said, The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there's in life to celebrate. Each day is worth celebrating. So take a moment and find those things to celebrate. And if you liked this podcast and you're looking for some new podcasts to check out, two of my favorites that I listened to often are leaning in the leadership by Dr. Darren pepper and podcasts p d by AJ Bianco and Chris Nessie. They thank you for being here for being part of the teaching champions community. If you think someone will benefit from this message, I would truly appreciate it if you could share it. We support we encourage we lift each other up. And always remember, whether you're from rural America, to urban America, to Canada to Spain to Bahrain. We're all on that same team. We're all on that same issue and we're always better together. Keep being amazing, my friends and as we go out into the week, May you step into your strength, may you step into your shine, and let's build our champions up. Have a great week, everybody