Between Classes

 

Ah.  One of my happy places…Years (nearly decades!) ago, a master teacher advised me to put a picture of a place I loved where I could see it in my classroom.  “When you feel your energy dip and your temper rise,” she explained, “look at your picture and pretend you’re in that special place instead of in the classroom for just a few seconds.”   I took this photo I snapped during an E.F. tour of France, blew it up to poster size, laminated it and hung that sucker over my students’ heads in the back of the room.  I won’t tell you how many “seconds” I spent staring at it as students’ tangential, late afternoon banter battered my careful planned lessons.  Let’s just say I looked at it often…

 

I recently told a long tenured, extremely learned, and intermittently discouraged peer of mine about this advice.  Months later, he called me over to his desk:  “Kate, come look!  I did what you said!”  He flopped open his grade book, and from inside the front cover, his gorgeous gray cat calmly gazed at me.  “I glued them in there,” he explained, “and when I think I’m going to lose my mind, I just walk over to my desk, open my grade book, and pretend I’m at home petting her!  I swear, it lowers my blood pressure…” At this point in the semester, folks, I’m a big fan of whatever works!

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