As educators our days can be filled with a whirl wind of different emotions, ups, downs, trauma-based experiences, and moments of pure joy. I often equated my time in the classroom as a teacher to riding the ocean waves without a boat and in a lot of cases probably while whatever I was floating over the waves on was on fire.
The emotions as an educator are big some days and it is imperative that we as teachers take time to process and truly experience the waves of emotion that hit us during a school day. I can recall a time when I had just finished with one of my small groups, one of my students had just mastered an IEP goal that they had, had for a full year, it was right before their annual IEP meeting that they met it. They had been making slow steady progress the whole year, but I wasn’t sure we were going to quite make the goal, but they did. In that moment I was filled with joy, pride, gratitude, and excitement for that student while moments later a student came into my room need assistance with emotional regulation because of an event that had happened outside of the school setting. How quickly in those moments our emotions and experiences changed. My joy, pride, gratitude, and excitement shifted very quickly into empathy, calm yet vigilant, sadness for what my student had experienced and somewhat of a crisis mode response to be prepared if anything started to escalate.
While many professions have these moments and we have these turn of a dime moments in our lives, educators do this daily for 25+ students. Emotions that are built in the classroom and often carry into classroom settings from home, online, or any other scene students experience. So, to combat these moments it is important that we as educators take time to reflect, and not just when we have breaks but daily, weekly, monthly; Whenever we have an opportunity so that we can continue to attend to our lives inside and outside of the classroom and be emotional available for ourselves and our families. Spend some time for yourself, reflecting and processing what you’ve experienced each day because even on your worst days as an educator you’ve impacted a child and made a difference in our world.
Some prompts to help with reflection:
· What are 2 positive events that have happened?
· What was the most challenging thing that has happened recently?
· Who have I helped recently?
· Who has helped me recently?
· How can I show gratitude to those who have helped me?
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