How to Have a Bad Day
“Have a great day!” How often do you hear people wish that for you? But what do they mean? Are they wishing that the magic fairy of happiness would sprinkle sparkly glitter on your head? I don’t think it works like that.
Instead, it takes a personal active commitment to have a great day. To make my point, I’ve created a list of five habitual – and unconscious – actions so many of us take that create our bad day.
Purposefully choosing to avoid those actions is what really leads to a great day.
Hang out in the faculty lounge with other people who complain about kids, the administration, the parents, and general school conditions. Misery loves company, and these folks enjoy the companionship of others who help them admire the problems. To have a bad day, spend just a few minutes there, and you’ll forget all the things you’re grateful for.
Decide one class is the worst this school has ever seen. Lump all students into one group and characterize them with negative attributes. To have a bad day, start dreading your time with them first thing in the morning and tune your antenna to collect evidence that you’re right about them.
Let your personal issues intrude into how you relate to others. Sooner or later, we all face life challenges — illness, family and financial stress, unexpected emergencies — how we deal with them is a matter of character. To have a bad day, fixate on them instead of those young faces in front of you. Then watch their annoying, creative attempts to regain your attention.
Get into a power struggle with a student. There’s a saying that students who need the most love ask for it in the most unloveable ways. To have a bad day, seek the student who challenges you the most and back him into a corner. I guarantee that he won’t lose.
Float through your day, just trying to survive. Simply “do your job” without taking the initiative, to offer creative solutions or problem solve, or perform random acts of kindness. To have a bad day, forget that you became a teacher to make a difference.
You have a choice. You could make it a great day!
