Finding the Motivation

So yesterday I updated you guys about where I'm going to be this year and about my amazing principal. I did start to talk about the new superintendent and seeing Ron Clark at Convocation. I'm not going to talk about that a lot here, because if you wanna know what it was like seeing Ron Clark I'm sure he's all over YouTube and Instagram, and seeing him do his thing will leave a better impact that anything I would be able to put into words. I know I said this was going to be like a part 2, but this is really more of it's own separate post (sorry Uncle Paul it's not going to resolve the cliff hanger lol).

After we left Convocation I was so pumped up! I was ready to take on the world, I was #AllIn4Aldine. But that was over a week ago, and I haven't had to deal with students yet. I know that when the students get to my room tomorrow it's going to start the slow decline on my motivation to get out of the bed every morning. So that's why I'm writing this post, because I know that at some point that you'll need help to keep going.

You've got to find something to hang on to. It could be as simple as wanting the achieve perfect attendance, or as deep as your students are counting on you to be there(honestly I'm somewhere between the two). Here's a list of some of the things that keep me going, and some that I borrowed from other teachers.

1. "Read in Case of Bad Day" book- this one takes a little planning, but at the end of every school year I pass around a journal for my kids to write a little snippet in. Of course you get the little "have a great summer" ones but then you get to the ones from kids you didn't expect to hear from and it makes you want to cry because it's so beautiful to see how you touched their lives. Reading a few entries from your previous students is enough to keep you going until the end of the year.
2. Keep track of the little extra things that students give you- last year I had a lot of cartoonists in my class, and they doodled things on the back of their assignments, or they gave little pictures that they drew. I kept it all. Some of it I have hanging up in my room, and some of it is just pictures I have saved on my phone. It doesn't seem like much, but it's enough to remind you that your students took some time out of their day and they thought of you.
3. Get you a theme song- athletes have one they listen to before a game to get them pumped up, teaching is the same thing. It's the little things that help.
4. Have a support group- if you're a new teacher usually they assign you a mentor to work with, and they can help you with questions and problems you might have. If you don't have a mentor, then there's always the teacher around the corner (hi Shirley!), or the other young person on your team (hi Alyssa!) or some combination of them all.
5. And to quote a fellow teacher, "Its just one day, once class period. You have a group of kids that love you so you can't give up" Alyssa Barber 2018. You can't come into today's classroom with yesterday's problems. 

I hope one of these things will help you guys out when times get tough. Or if you have one that I didn't talk about then mention it in the comments. 

Happy learning, 

Casey