How to Feel Better Instantly, Even In the Middle of Class

This is me every morning before school, sipping purple tea with magical flowers flowing from my fingertips.

You ever feel like it's early April, Spring Break ruined everyone's motivation including yours, and the school year just seems to drag on?

It may seem like it's impossible to shake off the teaching stress overload, but my friends, I'm here to tell you it can be done. Not only that, but it can be done instantly.

I went to Unleash the Power Within with Tony Robbins in November, and this was one of the skills that was hammered into our heads and bodies over and over in the course of the 4-day, 12-hour-per-day event.

To Change How You Feel, Change Your State

Tony Robbins is huge on changing your physiological state in order to change your emotions, and thereby improve your outlook, your health, your productivity, and even your relationships.

He always uses the example of people who are depressed. Their shoulders slump, they breathe shallowly, their head and gaze are down, and their voices become strained and quiet. Movements are slow, heavy, with sort of a hopeless or irritated tone about them. For me, when I'm in this state, I feel more pain in my body (back troubles, neck pain, TMJ pain, plantar fasciitis in my left foot, etc.) Compare that with the physiology of someone who's feeling happy, proud, blessed, excited, and well. They hold their head high and shoulders back. Their expression is relaxed and open, gaze up. Maybe smiling. Breathing from the diaphragm, deeply. Jaw relaxed, heart center open and softened. They move faster and with more intention, more "bounce." I will tend to dance around a little when I'm feeling good, make jokes to myself (and laugh at them, ha.)

So Tony would say, change your physiology to the happy, proud, excited one, and your emotions--and eventually, your health--will follow. Try it right now.

How To Feel Better Right Now

1. Lift your sternum to bring your shoulders back.
2. Raise your chin a bit.
3. Relax your expression. Relax your mouth, jaw, eyes.
4. Soften your gaze and raise it to a point just above your natural eye level.
5. Smile gently.
6. Smile bigger if it feels good; show your teeth.
7. Inhale deeply into your diaphragm, but in a relaxed, confident way.
8. Stand up if you're seated, and walk with intention to the kitchen.
9. Get a glass of water, and squeeze some lemon in it if you have a lemon.
10. Drink the water.
11. Do a little dance.
12. Think of one thing you are truly grateful for, and hold that thing in your mind, savoring it.

Do everything on the list. DO IT. Then, check in with yourself. How's your emotional state now? How do you feel? Did that process take the negative, depressed edge off, at least? I consciously do this in class while my students are working on something (sipping the water from a bottle on my desk, and skipping the dance part. :)) Then I stride around the room checking on their work, seeing if anyone needs help, and purposefully noticing the positive things.

I do this as often as I can, because I need it over and over all day long at school. Over time, it has become more of a habit, linked to "get them working on something independently" - i.e., Duolingo, Quizlet, a story translation, a 10-minute essay. (Supposedly if you train yourself that every time X happens, you do Y, you'll make it a habit that you don't have to remember or think about every time.)

I hope this helps someone. May your April blues dissipate, and may you have a wonderful rest of your school year.

And in the meantime, follow me on Amazon to stay up with my new releases. I'm working on some exciting new projects that I hope to have ready for public consumption by June 1. :)

The Guy Who Insisted On Taking Spanish

Four years ago, I had a 9^th grader I'll call "Nick" in Spanish 1.  He had dishwater-blond hair cut to about ½” all over his head with a perpetual rooster tail sticking up on the crown of his head.  Glasses.  Tall, lanky, a little shy, and polite.  On an Individualized Education Plan, they told me before the first day of class that Fall.

Nick's IEP said that due to his learning disabilities, it was not recommended that he take Spanish at the high school level after he finished 8^th grade, but that he really wanted to take Spanish anyway. Due to his persistence, they had decided to let him try it, and he was allowed to enroll in my class.  I was asked by his case manager and his mom that if it didn’t seem like he was going to make it in Spanish, to be sure and let them know within the first few weeks of school so they would still have time to put him in a different elective before he got in over his head; they stressed that he was only in Spanish because he had insisted on being given the chance to try it.

As soon as I heard all this information, I made Nick the “presidente” (leader) of Costa Rica (the grouping of desks on my left) on my seating chart.  Any kid who insists on being given the chance to take Spanish against all the adults in his life deserves to be presidente, in my opinion. 

Other than that, I didn’t treat Nick differently from anyone else.  I was prepared to offer him extra help as needed to make sure he passed, but he didn't need it.  He learned like gangbusters in my class.  He participated, did all the written work, and had a big smile on his face every class. 

Nick broke his left wrist riding his bike after the first week of school.  Being left-handed, he had to do all his written work with his right hand.  He laboriously did every bit.  I have had students (not on IEPs) with full use of both hands that didn’t put half the effort he did into writing stories. 

Nick did awesome in Spanish 1 and went on to succeed just as well in Spanish 2.  Stories like this one that make me so glad I am a teacher.  It is my privilege to give access to and encouragement in learning to kids like Nick, because I believe that a kid who has full access to learning has access to the world. :)

Moments of Fulfillment Do Come in Teaching, Thank God

I just have to tell somebody what happened yesterday.  I was pushing my cart through Wal-mart, turned the corner and saw two of my students from regular Spanish 3 this year coming toward me.

"Regular" Spanish 3 means the two 40-student classes I had this year that were comprised of students who did not want to enroll in Pre-AP Spanish 3 because, in general, they were only getting a third year of Spanish 3 for college and really had no personal passion for learning it, as many of them frequently informed me loudly throughout the year.

I pushed those classes hard all year, basically at 95% of the level that I pushed my two Pre-AP Spanish 3 classes.  They read a page of Spanish every day, had at least a basic conversation in Spanish about the "Question of the Day," learned a new set of complicated vocab phrases, heard me tell a story, answered questions in Spanish about the story, and went through page after page of grammar worksheets on Preterit, Imperfect, Preterit versus Imperfect, Subjunctive, Future, Conditional, Present Perfect, and Past Perfect.  (That was in the fall.  In the Spring Semester, they went through every single grammar topic again.)

I grilled and drilled those classes, and yes I did have some major whining at times.  In fact, one of the students I ran into yesterday was hands-down my Most Vocal in letting me know she did not like the class, did not want to learn Spanish, was only taking it for college, wasn't learning anything because she didn't feel she was good at it, etc.  Pretty much every day she played on her phone as much as she could before I'd insist she participate, which only worked occasionally, and usually if I did get her to put up her phone, she would put her head down on her desk.  Lots of sighing and eye rolling from this one, too.  (Now let me also say that personally, I have absolutely nothing against this girl, and understand that when you don't like a class's subject matter or workload, you just don't.  And she did let me know a few times her attitude was nothing personal against me as well.)

The other girl was a good student this past year, but also not necessarily the eagerest beaver in love-love-loving Spanish class.  Neither of the two girls loved Spanish 3 enough this past year to continue on to Spanish 4 or AP, let's put it that way.

Okay, so the two of them spotted me in Wal-mart, and immediately brightened and made a bee-line to talk to me.

"We just got back from Nicaragua," they told me.  (I remembered the Vocal Girl telling me several times in class that she was going to Nicaragua for a mission trip or community service type thing in the summer, and she would usually add, "And nothing I'm learning in this class will help me communicate there."  This seemed to be her opinion because my vocab phrases are too "weird" and not "normal speech."  I get that a few times a semester in class, actually.  "When are we ever going to need to say this???"  I tell them, the reason you're learning Le enseñó a saltar con el Pogo Stick all as one phrase, is so you can learn le enseñó a; I just need the Pogo Stick so you'll remember the other part.)

"Oh, Nicaragua--you already went and came back?" I asked, cringing a little waiting for Vocal Girl to let me have it about how little she understood or was able to communicate.

"Yeah, and I spoke way more Spanish than I expected," Vocal Girl told me.

I could hardly believe my ears.  "Did you understand them, too?"

"Yeah.  I would understand a lot for awhile, and then all of a sudden someone would talk way too fast."

"I was pretty much fluent by the end of the week," the other girl chimed in.  "I was conjugating verbs in my head at night in bed, and they all made sense.  And then the next day, I would use them on people, and they understood me, and I was like, 'YES!'"

Vocal Girl had a lot more to tell me, too.  "At night, when we would get back to the Quinta, I'd still be speaking Spanish.  Then I would go, 'Oh, I guess we can speak English now.'"

The other girl said that all the verb conjugating that was so hard and didn't make sense in class, suddenly made total sense to her.  "And I don't know why!"

I was beaming by then.  "Because you're using it in real life.  I wish I could take the whole class to a Spanish-speaking country for a week, because then they would really get it."

So they held me there for a few more minutes, telling me all about how well they did in Spanish in Nicaragua, until I told them for the third or fourth time how proud I was of them and how they'd better come by my room next year to say hi.  They promised they would, I wished them a great summer, and we parted ways to finish shopping.

And I still have this huge grin on my face.

Lesson learned?  NEVER give up, on any student, ever.  Never give up teaching the best I can, every day, knowing that even when it looks like a total waste of time, it isn't.  I'm just telling you that if THAT kid, that particular Vocal Girl, learned usable Spanish and felt proud of herself in a real-world scenario, then all my hard-fought teaching was worth it because it DID accomplish something.

"High Expectations" and My Perfectionism

Okay, so the school year began three weeks ago, and this is the first weekend I feel I can even remotely catch my breath.

Biggest triumph so far? My level 3 students and I are making up some hilarious stories together and having a blast doing it. They definitely buy into this game of Stories-To-Learn-Vocab now, after two years with me. They are doing the gestures and coming up with crazy, fun stuff. I was going to just draw stick figures on the board and not make them get up and act this year, but they are begging to act things out now. What a switch from year 1 when I had to coerce them into acting.

Biggest struggle so far? My head. I'm obsessed with how my classes are going, for better or worse. I want to speak Spanish more. I want them to speak Spanish more. I want every single moment of every class to be incredible. I want everything I do to go over like gangbusters, to be awesome, to be the most perfect thing anyone's ever seen in a Spanish class. Guess how realistic that is?

"This is level 3," I keep telling myself. "I should be speaking Spanish 95% of the time!" Or, "They're in level 3 and they STILL don't get preterit/imperfect!" Or, "They should know more vocab by now." Or, "I have to get to such-and-such grammar point ASAP!!! We're already behind!"

Incidentally, I'm way harder (in my head) on myself and my students in my level 3 classes, because I've had these kids for two years. The Level 4/AP Spanish class is more relaxed for me psychologically because I didn't teach these kids and don't know them, so my expectations for them are more flexible. Odd, too, since that class has this hellishly difficult exam coming up in May, which will clearly delineate the quality of my teaching for all to see.

I have had to spend some time this past week talking myself down a bit, because I store all my stress in my back, and it's been extremely painful and stiff lately. It's okay if I don't get to every single grammar point, every project, and every piece of literature I had planned and (gasp!) published in my syllabus. (It's in the syllabus, so obviously I MUST do it ALL!) Who sets these bizarre expectations for me? I'm suddenly the "lead" Spanish teacher in my department now, so...no one! No one but me. Come to find out, I'm a taskmaster, and I have to stop it.

So the 3's need more work in preterit and imperfect. Guess what? So do I, and I've been studying Spanish for years and years. That's no big catastrophe. We just keep teaching it until they get it.

I have to do the subjunctive this year, along with about 4 other tenses I sometimes don't remember the names of. I'm intimidated; I'll be honest with you. But I know I'm a good teacher, and I never give up on anyone. I'll keep teaching them (and myself) until we all get it.

Does anyone else out there struggle with perfectionism in their teaching? How do you deal?

What Makes Teaching So Hard (or Easy)?

In my opinion, these things make teaching hard:

Kids are forced to go to school, and they don’t always want to be there or in my class.

In today’s relaxed disciplinary climate, I can’t count on parents, other teachers, or principals to make sure kids are submissive and cooperative in my classroom. I can only count on myself and my own skill at managing the classroom and engaging them in my material.

Too much of a teacher’s day is spent in front of students rather than preparing the lesson and regathering energy and focus. My ideal ratio would be 50/50. Smirk if you must, but teaching would be a completely different (and far more attractive) career if we taught for 3.5 hours and planned/collaborated/ regrouped for 3.5 hours a day. (I’d even go for 4 hours teaching, 3 hours planning/break.) We’d be more relaxed and creative in class, and you’d see less attrition in teaching. (The attrition numbers don’t lie. If this were a super-attractive career, people would be flocking to it, not away from it.)

Too much of a teacher’s day is spent on time-wasting, energy-sucking tasks like a) meetings that have no relative point or actual effect on anything; b) endless, redundant data entry (often into sub-par software programs that aren’t user friendly because they were created specifically for sale to school districts, who are often sold on fancy presentations and false promises. I could go on a major rant here, but I won’t. Not right now, anyway.) And c) sifting through unrelated emails and/or papers in my box at the front office.

And last, outside sources have various expectations of what I should be teaching, how I should teach it, and what the outcome should be for students. Those expectations may or may not line up with my own, and I often feel unnecessary pressure to meet others’ expectations.

So, what would make teaching easier?

Kids who want to be in my class and are engaged. They don’t automatically come that way, so this is up to me to create. (More on this in future posts.)

Classroom management strategies that I can actually make work for my particular teaching situation (this school/these students) and my personality. (More on this in future posts.)

Getting smarter about how I prepare so that prep work is at a relative minimum. A lot of this has to do with my organization strategies and literally where I store certain things in my room, to minimize unnecessary time/motion as I set up a lesson. (More on this in future posts.)

Saying no to unnecessary committees, meetings, and other time-wasters. In my opinion, one reason this remains such an “expectation” on teachers is that most of us try to accommodate and please our administrators in order to be seen as a team player, a valuable member of the staff, etc. I'm not a lazy person by a long shot, but I do have limited time and energy. I personally have chosen to focus my time and energy on my teaching in my own classroom, because the truth is, if I deliver the goods in terms of excellent teaching, happy students and parents, it doesn’t matter that I said no to the umpteen requests to join committees, cover others’ classes, etc., they’ll be reluctant to fire me (I say with rather brazen assurance.)
(**Okay, disclaimer about meetings: There are, of course, some meetings you should attend, like IEPs, RTIs, entire-staff meetings especially at the beginning of the year, etc. Also, if you are in your first year, my advice is be sure to attend everything that is expected of you but avoid taking on too many additional committees, clubs, etc. if possible.)

Coaching myself and my mentee(s) daily, if need be, that my true clients are my students/parents, not other teachers, the administration, the other high school, or anyone else. So the primary expectations I need to meet are those of my students/parents and of myself. (In my teaching situation, if the students are happy, the parents are happy, so that’s why I say “students/parents” as a unit.) 

If students are learning Spanish and enjoying it, my goals are met. If every student in my room makes progress on his or her own scale and feels good about taking Spanish, my goals are met. If 90-99% of them go on to take the next level of Spanish, my goals are met.

What would make teaching easier in your opinion?

Why Teach?

Good teaching is hard to pull off. Let’s talk.

I’m licensed as a “Master Teacher” in the state of Colorado, and hold National Board Certification in World Languages Other than English. I’ve taught middle school, high school, and adults. I have 12 years experience in education, and from my second year of teaching, I’ve mentored and trained several other teachers.

And I’m still figuring out how to do my job.

I think teaching in public school is the hardest job on earth to do well. Just my opinion, based on personal experience and observation. Unlike some teachers, I've had a variety of other jobs. I've sold snowcones at carnivals, plowed wheat fields with a tractor, been in the Army, worked as a switchboard receptionist managing 40 incoming phone lines, worked in women’s clothing retail, supervised 10 teachers as the ELL coordinator for my school district, and written an online course for a university. Teaching in a public K-12 classroom is by far harder than any of those jobs.

Yet I choose to do it on purpose. Why?

I love the challenge, and when I actually pull off an excellent day of teaching, I feel like a million bucks.

Seeing students learn and enjoy it is incredibly fulfilling.

Summers off.

I know the average human could not step into my classroom and do what I do, and that makes me feel pleasantly smug.

The U.S. is in desperate need of good teachers.

My students give me so much love and joy. Usually.

I know that I am making a huge difference in a lot of young people’s lives. Hopefully mostly for the better.