You are a rock star waiting in the wings of the stage for your moment in front of the crowd.
Nine
This is Monday…your big show. This show sets up every other show this week. Mondays mean more than any other day.
Eight
You are ready. You’ve got this. You are rested and ready to go.
Seven
You have planned and prepared. You have nothing left but to execute your lessons. You can do this.
Six
No matter what the day brings, you are a professional. You know what to do. Get ready and get out there and do it!
Five
You know your best laid plans will be mostly derailed by lunchtime, but you are ready. You have back up plans. You have a system in place. Don’t think about what can and will go wrong. You do have this. Don’t worry!
Four
Breathe in. Breathe out. It is almost go time. The students are ready for you. Get your mind ready for them.
Three
No matter what happens today, you are awesome. You know that you are. Through all of the monitoring and adjusting, remember to be the awesome that you are!
Two
Get amped up! Get psyched! You live for this! Get your teaching game face on!
One
Ready or not, it is time to go! You are a teacher. Teach like you know it. Teach like your mean it! You were born for this!
Image: Wikipedia
You are awesome! You are believed in! Go out and teach like you know you can! Keep teaching, Teacher!
Was this your week last week? I know at my school, behavior seems to decline shortly before summer and teacher stress increases in response. Tomorrow is a new day. Monday lets last week go away and you get to start all over again. That goes for you…and for your students.
Remind yourself of this tomorrow morning. You have a fresh start. Remind your students, too. They have a blank slate week. Inspire them to do more with this week than they did last week.
Be hopeful. Make the students wonder what happened to you over the weekend! Make hope your goal tomorrow. Inspire your students to greatness.
You are awesome! I know this week will be better than last week for you. Go out there and make that true! Keep teaching, Teacher!
Today is Friday. Though most people, even some other teachers, view Friday as a day to coast until the weekend, you don’t. Friday is one of the toughest day of the week, second only to Monday. For great teachers like you, Fridays are make-or-break days. They determine how you can evaluate your teaching for the week. Have the students learned everything they needed to? Have you taught in a way that makes everything tie together and give your students long term understanding? Will they know enough to move on in your content for next week? If they don’t have it by Friday, you’ll have to backtrack and lose time on Monday. Sometimes you even have to backtrack and reteach until Tuesday…and all because the previous Friday did not go well. Friday is big. It is huge!
More than teaching and learning, Fridays are big because your students want to coast until the weekend. The later in the day it gets to be on Friday, the less focused your students become. They are thinking about the weekend. More so, if this is near the end of the school year for you, the students are thinking about the weekend and the summer. It gets harder and harder to contain the students and keep them engaged. Fridays are hard because you have to be MORE together with your plans, MORE engaging, MORE patient, MORE understanding, and MORE intentional about every second of class time.
DearTeacherLT2015 (You may use the image if you link back to the blog and/or give credit to Dear Teacher/Love Teacher)
No, Fridays are not easy. Not for you, Awesome Teacher. Fridays are important. You know today is a huge day for your week.
I believe in you, Teacher! Even though this is the day of MORE for you, I know you have MORE to give. Pour it out! Give it all you’ve got! Go big! This is your day, and you’ve got this! You can make this the best Friday that you’ve ever Fridayed! (Yes, I just made up a word, but I am a teacher and I am allowed to do that.)
Teacher, you are AWESOME! Give your students the MORE that you have in you for this Friday! Keep teaching, Teacher! Consider yourself believed in!
I do not know what yesterday was like for you. I can guess that it was probably one of three possiblities, though, because that is usually how it goes as a teacher.
It might have been a great day. Everything you wanted to do worked out. Everythng you touched turned gold, so to speak. Your students did exceptionally well. Every class that you taught was a masterpiece. Your administration thought that you are a jewel and model of an ideal teacher. Things just went well. Those days are few and far between, but they do happen. If it happened for you yesterday, I salute you and celebrate with you!
It may have been a bad day. These days are pretty much the opposite of the golden days. Everything you touch turns to…well, you know. Nothing goes right. The students had the worse behavior day that you can remember. Computers did not work. Your projector went down or blew up. There were no supplies. There were classroom interuptions. Your administration was at your back and heaping more work on you than you can possibly take care of in a day, week, or year. It was an altogether bad day. Unfortunately, we have these days far more than the golden ones. Teaching is hard work and can give us disappointing days. If this was your day yesterday, I feel you and share your fustration.
Then there is the third option: the “blah” day. Some people may call it a normal day. Things went exactly as you expect. There were ups and down, but nothing extreme. You taught well enough. Most students seemed to pay attention, and some even seemed to retain some of the knowledge. You did okay. It was an okay kind of day. Your lesson and strategies were adequate, though you weren’t earning teacher of the year or anything. It was just, well, blah. Mediocre. Common. These are the days that happen more than most for a lot of teachers. If this was your day yesterday, then I understand. I know what they are like. For me, these are the ones that get to me. Too many of these days in a row and life as a teacher can get pretty boring.
I know there are a lot of peaks, valleys, and variations between these three types of days. I simplified a bit, but I think you understand what I am getting at. We all either had a great day, a bad day, or a day somewhere in between. Thus is the life of the teacher. Days like these strung into weeks, weeks bunched into quarters, quarters paired into semesters, and semesters connected into a school year. But, each day is different. Each day is new.
No matter what kind of day you had yesterday, today is a new one. Don’t bank on yesterday’s great day, focus on making today even better. Don’t let yesterday’s bad day set you up for another bad day today. Don’t self-fulfill prophecy! Make today good. Or at least look for the good that is there today even if it turns out to be another bad one. And don’t settle into yesterday’s mediocre. You are better than that, teacher friend. Make today an extreme…great risk brings great reward! Teach like you mean and stop sitting back and letting the year fall away!
You are too awesome to let yesterday determine today. Take the blank page and start writing. Start drawing. Start something. Make today the day you want it to be.
AND…don’t forget your students need to learn to do the same. Help them through the bad yesterdays. Give them a blank page with you today. Help them to learn to make each day better than the last. You don’t know what they are truly going through all of the time, but you can help them learn to work through it and view each day as a new page to write or draw on. You are awesome, help your kid learn to be awesome, too.
You are a great teacher, and don’t you forget it! Keep on teaching, teacher. Make today great! I know that you can. I believe in you!
I know your job is hard, but you are almost at the end. Don’t give up! But don’t just power through. Savor these last weeks of the year with your students! You have precious time left with your kids. Minutes count down. The grains of sand in the hour glass are slipping down. Your time to influence, inspire, and initiate lifelong curiousity is fading away. Do not waste a second with your students! Let them know how much you care. Teach until the last milisecond. Work hard to give your children the spirit of learning that will follow them long after your time with them is done. Summer is just around the corner. Pour your life out for your kids. You have time to fill back up!
You are awesome and you are supported. Keep teaching, teacher!
Dear Teacher/Love Teacher 