Balance
Our school has a “theme” each month. A credo. A mission statement. A focus.
There are videos and reminders about that certain aspect of life. Sometimes, there are even t-shirts. This month — March — is BALANCE. (And look at the syntactial balance of that previous sentence!)
I was asked to write something for our newsletter that goes out to our staff about balance, so I figured I should plagiarize the crap out of that for my blog post this week — since I’ve been doing a terrible job keeping up weekly.
So, here is an adapted email I sent to a teacher colleague about balance.
What does balance mean to you?
Balance is remembering that no matter how mad, upset, stressed, or crazy I can get about school or football, it doesn’t change the price of Jeep parts. Whatever is bothering me, ultimately, doesn’t matter as much as I think it does.
Balance means to not bring home the bad stuff but to remember to share the good stuff. One crappy aspect of teaching is that our failures tend to outweigh our successes. Our bads tend to show up more than our goods. If I have one student who tells me to “Fuck Off!” in class, that tends to stand out and can upset one’s balance.
Some days, maintaining balance is to remember that 199 students didn’t tell you to fuck off.
