Are you looking for more ways to bring back joy and fun into your classroom? We’ve all been through a lot in the past couple of years. It is no secret that for many teachers, the challenges have taken the fun out of a job that they once loved. And now, it seems, teachers want to reclaim the joy.
Who doesn’t want more joy in their lives? Our mentor, teacher Brendon Burchard often reminds us to Bring the Joy!
It is interesting that our number one post in the past year has been one of our earliest posts, 8 simple Ways to Create a Joyful Classroom. We’ve shared it several times and it still rings true. If you want some simple ideas to increase the joy in your classroom tomorrow, visit the post here. Truly, it is an oldie but a goodie!
Do you know what else is fun? Celebrations!
We recently had a conversation with some teachers who are successfully using our book, The Inspired Teacher’s Journal: A Weekly Guide to Becoming Your Best Self, in their new teacher mentoring program. We were thrilled, and then we realized that it has been exactly one year since the launching of our book.
We may not be on The New York Times best seller list (though we did reach number #1 in several education categories) but we DID launch a successful book that is still selling one year later. We recognized a chance to celebrate!
No matter the size of a success, success is still something to get excited about. There is so much good happening around and within us, yet we often don’t stop to take the time to recognize the successes.
It is easy to understand why. Our days are busy. Things are moving quickly in the classroom, the school, and the world. Though people are tasked with identifying learning loss, no one is tasked with recognizing school successes. It is human nature to focus more on the things that aren’t going well than on the things that are going well. Negativity bias affects us all.
We know that there are a lot of things that YOU are doing that deserve celebration. Do you stop and acknowledge yourself for all of the good things you are doing? Do you take time to celebrate all of the little teaching wins?
What would happen if you stopped looking all the struggles and focused on the good things that are happening?
You may have heard it said that “Success breeds success.” This quote is often attributed to Mia Hamm, a two-time Olympic medalist. While Mia has certainly experienced both failure and success on the soccer field, she knows that when her team has success, they are more likely to replicate that success again and again. Repeated success results in a winning team.
Teachers have seen the same effect play out in classrooms. When a student experiences failure with a lesson, task, topic, or skill they are likely to lose motivation or stop trying in order to avoid failure. When a student shuts down, learning stops.
The opposite is true when a student experiences success with a lesson, task, topic, or skill. When they succeed, they are likely to be motivated to keep trying and take their learning in that area to the next level. When someone experiences success they feel a sense of pride and accomplishment. When others notice that success, the sense of accomplishment and pride is often accelerated.
If we want to increase learning, we can start with recognizing our successes.
You can read more about finding things to celebrate in our post Celebrate Your Teaching Wins.
A few weeks ago, we were with a group of teachers who were sharing their recent experience at an inservice day. They had all started laughing and then realized that it had been a long time since they had actually had fun together. They described how their stress seemed to lift and how joy filled them in a way that hasn’t happened in a long time. Listening to them, and watching their energy and animated faces as they described having fun, made our own hearts full.
That is our wish for you, that you will find ways to bring joy and celebration back to teaching.
Our best,
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