The Chronicles Of Nay

Happy Sunday afternoon! I hope that everyone is doing well. I am doing pretty well. It has been a week and a half since the last time I blogged because its summer vacation and my life just isn’t that exciting. Haha I go to bed, I get up, I eat, I drink coffee, I hang out with some people I go to bed and do it all again the next day! I started looking through a list of prompts to see if I could find something that would help me think of something to write about. I found one and it kinda punched me in the stomach. The question was: What are you offering the world? I thought self, this is how I address myself so that I know I’m talking to myself and I pay attention. I thought “self, what ARE you offering the world?”

So this past week I went to a restorative practices workshop. Basically the premise of the training was to get to the root of the bad behaviors and to build relationships in order to help with classroom distractions.  The training was basically good. There were things that I can use I my classroom. However, one of the biggest frustrations is that the training was delivered as if no one in the room fosters relationships in their classroom. I mean that is basically my method of teaching. I once had a professor that would say “the students don’t care what you know if they know you don’t care”. I completely get that not everyone has that same philosophy, but I just felt like they tone could have been different. That’s not the point here, sorry I got distracted. As I look back on my last 10 years in my classroom I think about all the students I have come across. That number is really close to a thousand at this point, and I wonder, was I a positive influence in their lives? Did I show kindness? Did I make a difference not only in their educational lives, but in their little worlds? When I was in college and people would ask me what my major was I would tell them I was an education major because my goal in life was to make a difference. As I got to teaching and started to do it day to day I realized that my biggest fear was that I would never make a difference. What am I offering the world? I mean I get up every day and I go to “work” and try to educate these students not only about science and math but also about being humans. Saying please and thank you and standing up for ourselves but not being a bully.  Encouraging the young men to be chivalrous yet also encouraging the young ladies to be strong independent women. What I hope I am offering the world is young men and women that question the world around them, that want to help the person next to them, and young men and women that want to go out in to the world and a difference.

During the two days of training there were a couple times that we had to turn to the person next to us and give them a compliment. Three different times the compliment given to me was that they just loved my kind smile and the fourth time one of the ladies said she loved my over all positive welcoming energy. As I ponder what I offer the world I hope that is what I hope I offer. I hope I offer kindness and happiness to the people around me. I hope that people think of me as kind,  sweet and funny, I mean I think I’m hilarious! Haha But as you go in to this week, take a second and think, What do you offer the world?