Finding Inspiration and Two Things We Should Teach Our Students

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. And whether you're a longtime listener, or this is your first time, I appreciate you, and thank you for being here. I hope it was a good week for you. And I ended my week on a high note, we've talked about grabbing your joy, grabbing on to those special moments. And I have one of those moments, right at the end of the week, we're doing a little independent reading time. And I'm reading with a one student, and another student comes up to me. And they asked me, Can I read that Dr. Seuss book. And I said, go for it. And they take this book that several levels above their reading level, back to their seat. And this is a student that was resistant to reading at the beginning of the year. And they open that book up. And while I'm reading with this other student, I would occasionally glance up. And this child has the book open, and they're just crushing it. They're using every word attack strategy that we've worked on. To go through that book, line by line. He was super engaged. And when we wrapped up, as soon as I finished with that one student, I looked at him, I said, I am so proud of you, you absolutely crushed that. And the student looks at me and goes, but Mr. Martin, I only read one page. And I didn't care. I looked at him and I was so fired up, I pounded my chest, I pointed him and I said you got after you used all the skills that we were worked on. And I'm so proud of you. It was a beautiful moment, to see a student get after it, to not give up to not just flip through the pages, but being gauged and try their best. And yes, that book was way above this child's reading level. But he was getting after it. And he was enjoying it. And he didn't give up and he wanted it. And it was just such a beautiful moment. Always grab on to that joy. And I know, in your classroom, there are so many moments like that for you as well. So always be on the lookout for that. In those aha moments, their source of joy and inspiration, but also the people that we choose to surround ourselves with their inspiration as well. And recently, I've been blessed to connect with a college professor who's out on the West Coast, and we're collaborating on a few things. And it's been awesome. The people that we surround ourselves with matter. And whether we realize it or not, they influence our moods, and they influence our behaviors. And we can get stuck just looking at our immediate surroundings. And we can get stuck in just looking in our specific areas. I'm down there with the youngest of the students. And we spend our days breaking down and kamto we talk about superheroes and which one's the best. And I'm going to assume up at the collegiate level, this gentleman is having some different conversations and tackling some different issues. But because our worlds are so different, that doesn't mean that we can't learn from one another. And in fact, I would say some of the best ideas that we can get come from people who have different experiences than you. There's inspiration to be had, and lessons to be learned from so many if we connect with others outside of our immediate circle, connecting with this gentleman and the lessons that he's taught me just through our conversations is reminded me of the story, the elephant in the rope. So listen to this story and see what meaning you get out of it. A gentleman was passing through an elephant camp. and all of a sudden he stopped. The gentleman spotted that the elephants weren't being kept in cages, or held by the use of chains. All that was holding them back from escaping the camp was a small piece of rope tied to one of their legs. It was obvious that the elephants could at any time break away from their bonds. But for some reason, they didn't. As the man gazed upon the elephants, he was completely confused as to why the elephants just didn't use their strength to break the ropes and escape the camp. It was surprising for him, the fact that these huge creatures were being held by only a small rope tied to their frontline. While his mind was still pondering, he saw a trainer nearby, who stepped towards the trainer and asked, may I ask why these magnificent animals just stood there and made no attempt to get away? When they could easily do that? The trainer smiled and replied, Well, when they are very young, and much smaller, we use the same size rope to tie them. And at that age, it's enough to hold them. As they grow up. They're conditioned to believe that they cannot break away, they believe the rope can still hold them. So they never tried to break free. This amaze the gentlemen completely, these animals at any time, could break free from their backs. But just because they believe they couldn't. They were stuck right there. Can you relate to that store? Our experiences, how we interpret different events. And what we hold on to, from these events, can hold us back if we're not careful. Finding those people who challenge our ideas. Those people who push you to take it a step further, who push you out of your comfort zone are important. Think about your teach. What constraints have you put on yourself? Or what constraints have you put on your champions that might be limiting the potential and possibilities? limiting ourselves is easy. So question the barriers you put up and bring people into your life that have fresh ideas that bring positive energy that challenge you that put a little fire into you. I know, I'm definitely grateful to my friend for that. And recently, I've been doing a lot of thinking as we enter the second half of the school year, outside the academics, what are some things that I can do to make my students mentally stronger, because giving our champions tools that they can use to be mentally strong, to face the challenges ahead, is important. And the first thing I came across was in the book 13 Things strong kids do by Amy mourn. And Amy Morin is a psychotherapist, she's a best selling author. And the book is filled with gems that we can use inside our classrooms to teach our students. And one of the things that she said was extremely important, was to teach our students to celebrate other's successes. And if you think about it, this is hard for adults, we struggle sometimes to celebrate others, when we see them being successful. All you have to do is look around. There's so many of us that struggle at one time or another to celebrate other successes. But it's important. Why do we want to celebrate others? Number one, it strengthens friendships, who doesn't want to be around someone that's positive, that points out the good things that you're doing? Number two, on a personal level, it helps mentally, when we're celebrating others, it lifts not only them up, but it lifts us up as well. And number three, there's so many lessons that we can take. When we see other people being successful. What can we learn from them. So it's important that we teach our students about this and it's not always easy, and there's many ways that we stop ourselves from celebrating others. And you might recognize these. Sometimes when something positive happens, someone will start bragging about themselves, how they did it bigger and better. Another coping mechanism people use is they'll be attention seekers. They see what someone else does. And they'll start off by saying you're so lucky that you got that. A third way we get around celebrating other people is will down playthings, will say, well, that's really not that impressive. A fourth thing people might do is they pretend they pretend like it doesn't matter. Like they didn't care about achieving that. And these are all ways that we can get all around celebrating other people. And it's important that we know this, so that we can recognize them in ourselves. But we can also recognize them in our students. And we can help point that out to our champions. Now that we've talked about some ways that we get around celebrating other people, let's talk about some strategies that we can use to help our students understand and help them celebrate other people. And the first is to have them walk a mile in someone else's shoes, to understand that the people that we see being so successful, or that we see doing something that we want, that they've faced many struggles that they've gone through things that we don't even know. And it's important that we teach them to take a minute to imagine being that other person firm and to think about things that they might have going on in their life, the struggles that they might be facing. And to understand, we just see those successes, maybe on social media, we just see the things that are spotlighted. But we don't always see those struggles. And everybody has them. So it's important that we walk a mile in someone else's shoes. A second activity that I think is pretty cool, is she talks about using a shoe box to demonstrate the things that we see on the outside, don't always represent what's on the inside. And she says that you can take a shoe box, and on the outside, decorate it with things that you want people to see whether it's words, pictures, etc, decorate that box with the things that you want people to see. And then on the inside, decorate that box with things that represent you that people might not see things that you have inside of you. And then compare, do the things on the outside of the box. always match up with the things that are on the inside of the box. Because the truth of the matter is, we only always see the outside. We don't get to see the inside. So that's a pretty cool activity right there. And it's always important to remember that comparison is the thief of joy, that we shouldn't be competing against anyone else we should be celebrating it everyone out, and that we should only be competing ourselves and other people's successes. It doesn't make you any less valid. It doesn't make you any less smart. It doesn't make you any less successful. It's important that we remember that. And it's important that we teach our students that and the second thing that I'm really going to look to implement and be deliberate at inside my classroom for the remainder of the school year comes from Justin sewer. Now Justin sewer, he's a mental conditioning coach for the Tampa Bay Rays. He has a podcast called increase your impact. And he has a lot of great tools and tips. And in his book, Pep Talk for parents, he talks about one of the things that we should be giving our students our Champions is that we should be teaching them to enjoy the journey. I know when I was assistant coach for the basketball program in my school, our varsity team had experienced a ton of success. In every single year, the players would be so pumped up and look so forward to the end of the season. All they could talk about was the playoffs. And we were constantly reminding them that the joy is in the journey to enjoy every single moment of it. And to not always be so focused on the end result. Because too often, we want that end result right away. And it's important that we model for our students that we teach our students to enjoy the small moments to focus on the process. To create mini goals that we take time to celebrate, to celebrate daily to celebrate weekly, we set the tone inside of our classrooms, we decide the energy that we bring, we decide what we choose to celebrate, we also decide how we handle those tough moments. Because we know along our journey, there's always going to be obstacles, there's always going to be things that stand in our way. And we know that's going to happen for our students. So how we approach these, how we model these is important. And that end of the school year is going to be rapidly approaching. So let's take some time and teach our students how to enjoy the journey. And tick, not Han, a Buddhist monk, once said, When you are a young person, you are like a young Creek and you meet many rocks, many obstacles and difficulties on your way, you hurry to get past these obstacles and get to the ocean. But as the creek moves down to the fields, it becomes larger and calmer. And it can enjoy the reflection of the sky. It's wonderful, you will arrive at the sea anyways. So enjoy the journey. Enjoy the sunshine, the sunset, the moon, the birds, the trees, and the many beauties along the way. Taste every moment of your daily life. So as you go out into this week, make sure you look for those aha moments. Find those people that fire you up, look to celebrate those around you. And make sure you take time to enjoy the journey. And my challenge for you this week is to do some reflection on how you're embracing the journey. How are you making it visible for your students? How are you taking the time to help them see the joy in the journey, the join the successes, the joy and facing the obstacles, the joy in facing the failures, and overcoming and learning from them. And ask yourself are you taking time for yourself to enjoy this journey? Thank you for listening for being part of the teaching champions community. I appreciate you. And if you think someone will benefit from this message, if you could share, I truly appreciate it. And don't forget to subscribe. So the podcast comes right to you every time a new episode is released. And always remember whether you're from rural America to urban America, to Canada to spend about rain. We're all on that same team. We're all on that same mission. 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 step into your shine. And let's build our champions up. Have a great week everybody