Keeping things in perspective...

I'm going to keep this one pretty short because, well, it's late and I'm tired. It's been a really busy week with some ups and downs. I had my first sub of the year on Tuesday while I was doing my reading testing on the students. Overall, it was a pretty successful day! The sub said she would be willing to come back if I needed her again :-) I knew it would be tricky with the whole not having assigned seats and not even regular classroom seats, but she was a trooper and saw the benefits to the setup based on the needs of the students. I also identified something important for this year when planning for a sub: I need to get my sub plans finished early enough (when I know in advance) so that I can share them with the sub before she even gets to my room. With the soft start to our school day and students being in the rooms, it doesn't really provide the sub with time prepare and read over the plans as it did in the past. So that is definitely something to work on...
Anyway, back to keeping things in perspective. A topic that has been coming up periodically during inservice meetings and staff meetings is helping students who have experienced trauma. One of my students has been dealt a pretty heavy blow this week. I won't go into details in respect for the family's privacy, but will simply say that a sibling of my student is experiencing a serious illness that requires an extended hospital stay. The outlook is a positive one for a full recovery, but this has clearly flipped my student's world upside-down while the family is working through this. But this experience is also a reminder about keeping things in perspective and identifying all of those outside influences that our students are experiencing on a daily basis. And that even on those hard days, when the some of the students seem to really be struggling with self-control, I can simply keep it in perspective that these are just kids, and I get to teach them.

Mindfulness thought for the week: The good will appear when you stop looking for the bad.

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