Ah, August. That fresh new year smell permeates the air with so much hope and promise. For some of you, you’ve just started back wtih children in the classroom. For others, you’re just receiving your Welcome Back packets and are getting ready to prepare your environments.
Close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Envision one of those peaceful, productive moments of normalization and contentment of discovery. See the beauty of your environment and of those young faces. Feel that wonder and curiosity. Focus on this for a few moments.
Can you feel that new school year magic?
Now file this feeling away in a place you can easily retrieve it. You’re going to need to come back to it periodically.
No class is perfect. Children make mistakes. Adults make mistakes. Together we can learn and adapt and work toward being better. Stumbles happen. So we have to get up, brush ourselves off, and regroup to forge ahead with a bit of new knowledge.
It’s been a rough couple of years. Remember to continue taking care of yourself. Just like children in our classroom struggle when their needs are not adequately met, we also struggle to be our best selves when our needs are not met.
I remember an old interview with Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder in which he said, “You can’t save someone from drowing if you’re treading water yourself.” Some people also like to say, “You can’t pour from an empty jug.”
I hope you’ve been arming yourself with self-care practices that best serve you. I hope you have been able to find your person or group of people on whom you can lean.
And I hope you can hold onto that new school year magic longer this year, to help make this year one of your best yet.