I wanted nothing more than to go home already.
This is how I felt after the Halloween weekend.
My quiet internal secret. My unspoken truth.
And, yet, the whispering message within me could not be ignored.
I knew what the whisper was saying; I’ve heard this very same several times in my life already.
‘You have to model what you want from others.’
I quickly snapped out of my, what I think as, my victim mentality, and immediately drove into the force of learning expectations per class.
It didn’t matter that some were exhibiting as if they’ve eaten more candy than any actual food group.
It didn’t matter that it was Monday and as I have always joked, Mondays are treated like dramatic relationships- It’s not you. I just like Friday better.
It didn’t matter that my body was dredding the awaiting assessments I should have graded over the weekend but chose, not to instead and so, now all sit on my table, awaiting correction, one out of just under 120 at a time.
It didn’t matter that in addition to the assessments needing to be graded, I had yet exit tickets that while I could simply ignore, I knew the importance of getting each back to students the next day for reflection.
A teacher to falter is one that just halters forward movement. Time stops for no one. Not even and especially, not teachers.
By the end of the day, I call my husband to tell him how I look forward to nothing more than getting home. However, I was going to brace myself to stay just until I broke into some grading.
I managed another thirty minutes before I saw my body quickly rise up, pack my things for the day to walk out of my classroom as if honestly, I felt myself running out and away as fast as I could without actually running.
I couldn’t even laugh inside. I was simply eager and aching to get out of the building, into my car, and out of the parking lot.
I realized at the moment I had driven off, I was running from the negative energy I had built up.
I didn’t like that me that had been pushing through all day to fake it until she made it.
I said my hallway greetings as students were passing through.
I reminded students what they needed out for those entering my classroom.
I gave high-fives or quick embraces to those who gestured out in asking.
I managed to nod and give some reassuring time and talk to those who needed a moment from me.
I even ate some candy students were happily sharing with me and remembered to thank a student out in the hallway who left a kind note on my desk.
I stopped. I looked. I listened.
I did all those things that was needed out of me with pep talks and redirects commingled within the entire day.
All that time, I was fighting that negative energy inside of me. That force of energy inside trying to win over what I know students, former, current, and those who have come to learn your name, needed instead.
Positive energy. A sticker I have posted on my glass panel next to my door.
How ridiculous to post such and yet, be the one to exemplify the polar opposite.
I held the fight just enough until the last student stepped out, saying my last farewell for the day, reassuring one another with a See you tomorrow! before the door finally closed for the day, leaving me alone to myself.
And, then, as if I could fight my inner self no longer, I let the negative energy out. I concluded with my colleague our scheduled meet to discuss our plans for the next few weeks, managing some quick shares of understood debriefing of how the day went before I solely found myself completely alone.
That was when I called my husband to tell him I would push through a little longer just to make a mark in correcting some entry submissions.
The negative energy had completely come out by this time, however.
No matter how much I was trying to push myself forward, I could only feel a pull back. I was dragging, pen to paper and all.
When you feel such, you don’t let it win. At least I wasn’t going to.
So, I did what I normally do when recognizing these rare and unwelcome times. I out-beat it.
It’s funny. I psychologically tell my negative energy that it has won, that I can take no more of my day and so, I would stop everything, defeated by its presence.
I put a stop to all that I was doing, packed up and saw myself walk out.
Quietly, inside, like an electronic device recharging, I could feel my positive energy increasing, to what was once my negative energy now realizing I had left it behind, in my classroom.
It may have thought to walk out with me but to my knowing, I had already planned on leaving it to die on its own.
My husband and children await at home to where when I see them, they will be like a breath of my known joy and peace.
Tomorrow, I will step back into my classroom, any negative energy exhausted from my long return, depleted by my now recharged positive energy walking in.
It may try to take me down again, perhaps making me feel behind.
I will quietly smile, place all my graded assessments I had happily corrected while watching and talking to my husband as he moved things around in his office at home.
Sometimes, you come to realize it’s not the physical challenges that try to take you down. It’s the negativity entering the heart, the mind, the body, and the spirit that try and convince you from moving forward.
All of us start with a force that adds to the mass times acceleration to create a negative or positive greater force.
If the starting force is negative, the result of the entirety of what is being pushed and carried will be negative.
If the starting force is positive, the result of the entirety of what is being pushed and carried will be positive.
So, respectfully, while I think Sir Isaac Newton brings us all to understand his second law in physics, F = ma, I beg to suggest that it actually should be F = f + ma.
Example given, 0 = -1 + 1(1) or 2 = 1 + 1(1).
A negative starting force with a negative acceleration can lead to a negative final force.
While a starting positive force with positive acceleration easily can double the final force.
In other words, negative force can lead to nullifying any mass and acceleration but even with a the most minimum, so as long as it is positive, increases the final force at great levels.
If we can just see the great impact of energies, perhaps it is understood why we should run away from the negative ones.
Literally and figuratively.
