Getting Right From Wrong

A month ago I physically walked away from the worst school year of my 18-year career.  Several months earlier I began a mental journey that took me away from school, too, even though my body kept showing up every day.  When school finally ended and my body was able to join my mind I shut down.  My daughters, my gardens, and my TV got my attention – nothing else mattered.  I was tired of my job, tired of my colleagues, tired of leading, tired of caring….just tired.  Not sure what I’d have done if I worked a real job that didn’t have summer vacation.  Also not sure where I’d be on this day, July 1, if not for the hand of Lady Fate.

I spent the first three days of this week driving to St. Paul with a colleague (who also struggled through a tough year) to attend not the class we wanted.  Our original choice that we very much wanted to attend got cancelled, so we picked a class that seemed less lame than the other choices.  We gave each other pep talks and reminders that no matter how bad the class ended up being we would still get a lane change and pay increase out of it, and it was only three days, and we could eat at different food joints each day.  We had an extremely closed and fixed mindset towards this class, a class that became the best, most timely, most perfect professional and personal development either of us have ever had.

Top 20 Training – Discovering The Power Of Choice was like an elixir for our ill souls.  We thought we were taking a class to become better teachers; we were given three days of guidance towards becoming better humans.  To be sure, much of the course revolved around improving our schools and student learning.  I will return to school in September a better teacher than I was a month ago.  More importantly, though, I have been shown a path out of the darkness that has consumed me, the human, for months.  I constantly talk to students about the power they have to make choices in life – I needed someone to do the same for me.  Fate led me to the training; the training has led me back to my life, and will move that life forward in a much different direction than it was on for so long.

Obviously there’s no way to pack 18 hours of class into one blog, and there’s no way I could deliver the Top 20 message as effectively as our instructors.  But here are my top five takeaways from the training:

1.     Can’t get out of it, so get into it!  We have the power to choose our actions in every situation, including the situations we don’t want to be in.  This has been a huge problem for me - pouting my way through events I didn’t want attend, half-listening at meetings, putting down an event that I didn’t like but was important to others.  The end result?  Nothing good.  I will change my behavior by choosing to “get into it”, whatever “it” may be.  Stay tuned.

2.     Say “Not now!” to thought circles.  Our minds wander, sometimes slowly, other times immediately.  One thought leads to a similar thought to another to another and eventually the mind is completely off topic.  We can train ourselves to recognize the beginning of a thought circle and stop it by telling ourselves “Not now!”.  I’ve been doing this for the last couple of days and have been surprised at how effective it’s been….and how often I have to do it.

3.     Honor the absent.  Negativity is a HUGE problem in our society.  Much of it begins when we dishonor the absent – talk negatively about those who are not in our presence.  If we can, instead, honor the absent, a large amount of negativity gets replaced by positivity.  I’m not terrible about dishonoring the absent…but I’m going to get better.

4.     If someone drops the ball, JUMP ON THE BALL!!  If a quarterback fumbles the football you don’t see the running back stand there and wait for the quarterback to fix the problem; the running back dives on the ball.  But how often do we notice someone make a mistake and then we do nothing to help fix it?  Or worse, we dishonor the absent by talking about the mistake with someone else?  I’m guilty on both counts.  I’m going to change that.

5.     Live with a purpose.  This was the final piece of our training, and the most powerful.  We talked about and practiced writing purposeful mission statements regarding the teacher portion of ourselves.  I will use the next couple of months to ponder my purpose, my mission, first as a human and then as a teacher.  I am convinced that my struggles this past year have been the direct consequence of an undefined purpose.

Three days of rainbows and lollipops can’t cure multiple months of storm clouds and skunk cabbage.  If school started on Monday I’d be out right now looking for a hole to crawl into.  My month-long sabbatical from life wasn’t doing me much good either, though, so I shake my head as I type because of the way this all went down.  The wrong class seemed right, the right class looked wrong, the wrong class disappeared allowing the right class to emerge.  Even the timing was perfect; the wrong class would have been a week earlier and in hindsight would have been too soon.  The right class ends just in time to change a calendar page and an attitude right along with it. 

So it’s July, and I’m back.  I’m not better than ever…yet…but I’m in a far better place than I was a week ago.  Call it coincidence, fate, destiny, God, or Buddha – some way some how I ended up getting right because of the wrong class and its reminder that I have The Power of Choice.