Connections, Change, and Controlling What We Can Control

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 host of the teaching champions podcast. And before I get started, I just want to say, thank you for being here, I appreciate you. And it's been a great week for me. This week, I connected with a professor from Boise State to collaborate with him on a small project. And it was extremely gracious of him to welcome me into his world and see a little bit of what he does. And I find it so interesting, because he's preparing these students to go into the world of television and radio. And I got to have a little peek at the studio where they film and see a little of how these amazing students are learning and how they're taking on the different roles, there's going to be associated with their job. And we talked about how we're really at two opposite ends of the teaching spectrum, where his students, they're getting ready to enter the workforce in my students, they're just starting their educational journey. But their parallels between the two worlds, whether they're seven years old, or they're 20 years old, how we communicate the ideas and knowledge to the students matters, how we scaffold Learning Matters, how we push them outside of their comfort zone matters, how we promote the risk, how we normalize failure, it matters, and how we build those relationships, matters. And these are parallels that run deep, no matter what level of education we teach. And we can get great takeaways, by stepping outside of our classroom and looking at others who may not be teaching in the same areas us. I can't tell you how much I've learned when I was an assistant basketball coach, by watching how the head coach communicated a teaching point to the players, or when we would go to watch some division one basketball practices, and watching how these college coaches, these coaches, who I've seen on ESPN, how they communicate, how they structure their practices, which is essentially their school day. So I would say always be watching, always be listening. There's teaching that's happening all around us. And there's gems and takeaways that we can get from everywhere we go and bring them back to our classroom. And I just want to thank my friend, who's a master educator, and as students as well for allowing me to be in their learning space. Another great thing that happened to me this week is I was able to connect with my friend, a mentor, Dr. Daren pepper, we taped an interview for next week's podcast. And this is a very positive person, a kind person, and someone who has a lot of experience from being a teacher, and administrator to a superintendent. So there's a lot of wisdom there. And after I finished the interview, it made me think about the power of connection. And having the opportunity to connect with my friend in Boise, Idaho, and then with my friend in Nebraska, was such a blessing. Because the people we surround ourselves with the people that we allow to take space in our head, have such a tremendous impact on us. And in a world where we live, where we are truly connected worldwide. We have the opportunity to meet like minded people, good people from all over the world. And I put a tweet out the other day, and someone responded about how do you make connections online. And I'm so far from being a guru at this. But one of my favorite books of all time, is How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. And then it mr. Carnegie says if you want to be an interesting person, be interested in others. And that's pretty powerful and worth mention. Again, if you want to be an interesting person, be interested in others. And whether it's in your personal life, or social media. If we take that time to truly be interested in others, to encourage others to support others, then you're going to make those powerful connections. And to round out the week, Friday was our last day. And now we're on spring break. And my champions definitely turned it up a few notches of excitement this week. But if you want to see true excitement, walk down the hallway at dismissal time, and see the faces of all your colleagues on that day before spring break. The smiles are a little wider, there's a lot of good vibes flowing throughout the school is definitely a great feeling. Today, I just want to touch on building resilience during times of change. In the book, our cultivating emotional resilience for educators, the author, Elena Aguilar talks about riding the wave of change. And we all know one thing that we can always count on, that there's going to be change, whether it's in our professional life, or our personal life, there's going to be change, and learning how to navigate that change is important. And then the book, Mrs. Aguilar talks about one of the best ways that we can build our resilience is by focusing on controlling the things that we can control. And it's easy to get caught up on focusing on things that are outside of our control. We can't control the policies that are put in place, we can't always control the new programs that are introduced into the schools, we can't control what our colleagues do or say, we can't control if we get an angry email from a parent. We can't control the world our students live in, when they're not in school, we can't. And so often we put all our energy into things like this, and it ends up depleting you, it can stress you out. If you focus on these, it can steal your joy. But there's so many things that we can control, that if you focus your energy in these areas, you would find more strength, you would find more resilience, you'd find more joy. So this is a short list of 10 things that you can control. Think outside of this list, though, as I'm going through this. What are other things in your life right now that you can control? Where should you be putting your energy. And the first thing is, you can control how much you smile. You can control how you greet others. Think about when those champions come rolling up to your classroom door, and they see that smile on your face. That message that you send to them, that first thing is key. And who doesn't want to show up to a place where you're greeted with a genuine smile. And the same goes for your colleagues, a little smiles, you pass them in the hallways, a warm greeting, it spreads a little joy. And when you go into a room and you spread a little joy, often a little joy is gonna come back to you. Second, we can control how we prepare ourselves physically, mentally and emotionally for the day, paying attention to the foods that we consume. The exercise that we get, the amount of sleep that we get having a meditation or mindfulness practice. These are all things that we can control. These are all things that are going to influence our day. A third thing that we can control is how we listen. And listening drives relationships, listening, drives, learn, listening drives, empathy, it drives understanding. And listening isn't always easy. Think back to this last week. Was there a conversation that you were involved in? In you know, that the other person that you were talking to? wasn't fully engaged in what you were saying? Was there a time this week where you were only half listening, or where you were only waiting for your turn to speak? Think about how relationships affect our day. They have a huge effect. And listening to those around us is critical for forming those strong relationships. Sometimes it takes slowing down. Sometimes it takes putting our ego to the side, and truly listening to another with an open mind and an open heart. And if we do this, it has a positive effect on our relationships, and it has a positive effect on our day. And with that in mind, a fourth thing that we can control is the space we use. Before we respond to something. Have you ever received an email that touched a nerve, and before you know it, your fingers are firing across the keyboard, you are hitting, send, and in that moment, it felt good, then you go home. And those regretful feelings start creeping in, and you wish you wouldn't have responded in such a way. We're emotional beings. And then the moment we can say, we can write, we can do things that we regret. You can't control the words or actions of others. And in a moment, you can't control how you feel about these. But you can control the space you give yourself before you respond. You can control whether when you're all revved up, whether you respond in that moment, or whether you walk away, let those initial waves of emotion settle. And think with a clear head of how you want to respond. We get to choose whether or not we give ourselves that space, we get to choose whether or not we will give ourselves an opportunity to take a step back from a situation and look at it from multiple different angles, to see if we can get more clarity. That is something that's within our control. A fourth thing that we can control is how prepared and organized we are for the day. And we don't always know how our lessons are gonna turn out. Some are a home run, and some at times can be a flop, and some are everywhere in between. You can't control all the variables that are going to happen. But you can control how prepared you are for that lesson. You can control having everything ready for the lesson so that you're not running to the photocopier at the last minute, or trying to dig something out of a cabinet as the students are walking through the door. You can control how you lay out your lesson, you can control how you think of the problems that might happen. Anticipate what are the trouble spots the students might have, you can control the activities that you plan for the students who are fast workers who get that work done fast, you can control how you plan out the support that you're going to give those who need it. These are all things that we can anticipate. These are all things that we can prepare for. And as Winston Churchill once said, failing to plan is planning to fail. A fifth thing that we can look at is focusing on what we choose to look for in people. If you want to see the good in people, you will see the good. If you want to see the bad and people, you're gonna see the bat. And this is important. If you have that champion that does something that sends the blood pressure rising, then it's easy at times to get caught in that trap, where that's all you focus on. And it's almost as if you're looking for that to happen. Be conscious of this, find the good in them, see the good in them, point your energy towards that part of them that's special and unique to them. And this just isn't for your students. It's for everyone around you. When you start focusing on what's good in others, the way you see them the way you look at them changes. And this is something that we can control. Number SAP, relationships are an investment. And to keep those relationships strong. We have to invest in them each and every single day. Our words, our actions, the little things that we do that little moment of time that you take out to make sure that a person feels seen that they feel heard, that they feel value. It matters and we control how we choose to invest or how we choose not to invest in certain relationships. Number eight, you can control when you ask for help and for support, you can control. And sometimes we can view asking for help is a sign of weakness. But in reality, taking that time to step back and asking for help is a sign of strength, you don't have to go it alone, and nor should you reach out. Don't be afraid to admit, when you need some help. This is something that we can control. Number nine, you get to choose the energy that you consume. There's positive energy out there to breathe in, and there's negative energy out there to breathe in. It's in the conversations we had, the social media that we take in the programs that we watch. And both sides of this is their, what we take in what we choose to participate in the conversations that we have, it's gonna affect us one way or another. And we can walk away from these feeling refreshed, enthusiastic, feeling upbeat. Or we can walk away from them feeling angrier, feeling better, feeling more negative about the world around us. We control what we consume. The choice is ours. So it's important that we choose wisely. And last, we can choose to have a gratitude practice, we can choose to look for those small moments that take place, the smiles, the conversations, the laughs, the aha moment, the moments that just melt your heart, are the moments where you stand there beaming. Because you're so proud of your champions, those moments are all there. If we choose to grab onto them, we can choose to look for those to hold on to those to cherish those. Focus on the things that you can control, the world around us is always going to be changing, there's always going to be things that are happening outside of our control. But if we take time and focus on the things that we can control, we can effectively ride that wave of change. And my challenge for you this week is identify two or three things that you can control and make a conscious effort to put your energy on focusing on notes. Pay attention to the benefits that you get from this. Before I wrap up, I want to give a shout out to my road awesome family led by Dr. Dan Peppard. And if you haven't checked out his leaning in the leadership podcast, definitely give it a try. It's one of my favorites. Also, if you're an administrator, check out Dr. Peppers workshop for high performance leadership teams. It's something that your district could truly benefit from. I'll leave a link in the show notes for this. And thank you for being here. For being part of the teaching champions community. I appreciate you. And if you think anyone would benefit from hearing this message, please share it. The goal is just to help others navigate the school year to feel a little bit better about this amazing profession that we're in. And the teaching champions community is all about encouraging, supporting and lifting 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 mission. And we're always better to get keep meeting amazing, my friends. And as you 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