3 Lessons My Kids Have Taught Me

I often reflect on the joys my 3 kids bring to my life. We take for granted all that kids can do for our souls, and I have found three lessons from my kids I need to embrace and live by:

1) Laugh often, and laugh hard: Listening to a child's laugh is contagious. Making them laugh so I can hear the true belly laugh is a daily event in our house. As adults, we need to find more times to laugh.   We need to create spaces for laughter breaks at work, and laugh as much as possible.

2) Move on from a bad experience or mood quickly: My youngest can put on a lower lip like none other. She can instantly start smiling and laughing 30 seconds later. My middle kid can be crying and upset because he messed up and got in trouble, but 5 minutes later, he's forgotten and moved on. My oldest is entering Jr. high this fall. She can be upset and go in her room, and a few minute later will come to find me and snuggle and be ready to move on. Too often as adults, we harbor hard feelings, hang on to negative thoughts, and can't "let go" of situations. We need to take the kid approach of "moving on" as life is too short!

3) Embrace trying something new: All three of my kids are adventurous and typically up for something new. They love exploring, riding rides, eating different kinds of food, and traveling. Watching them pick something up, play with it, ask about it, and test it is fun to watch. As adults, we need to have the curiosity and williness to try new things, explore, and learn something new. We need to have the kid approach of learning on a daily basis.

Although the three things above are simple, we as adults need the reminders to laugh, move on after a bad thought or experience, and to try new things! There is so much we can learn from kids. What will be your take-aways from your kids and/or the kids you teach?

Tune out the Negative People

Negative people and incidents ebb and flow in our lives over the course of time.  In the education world, negativity can kill a school culture, a teacher, and worst, a student.  Often a few vocal negative people can have way more power than they should.  The challenge we struggle with as humans is how to tune out the negative and not allow it to get us down.  We talk about grit and resilience, but not always the "how" to get rid of the negativity.

In the last few months I've struggled with a couple negative people getting me down, and struggled with them affecting me.  The constant road blocks thrown up, saying "no" to people just because, and simply not being committed to what is best for us all had worn me down.

As someone who is almost always positive and eager to take on any challenge, I felt defeated.  I was letting a couple jokesters get to me, and it was affecting who I was as a person.  The positive was I cared so for my work and the mission we are on, and wanted so bad to "fix" this situation.  The downside was, I didn't have the power in this situation to do anything to improve it.  I couldn't change the mentality and perspective of folks.  Some people just live in their little silo that isn't aligned with the rest of the team.

I hit the wall, and was ready to quit.  I even started looking around with the thoughts of a different job.  Finally, it hit me; I had two choices: 1) be a quitter and let them win, 2) find a way to ignore them and simply move on with what I know is my commitment to doing what I can to support constant improvement and moving the organization forward.

There were three steps I took to get over the hump.  Although they may not work for everyone, my encouragement is to reflect on what methods will work for you.  In the end, we HAVE to tune out the negative people.

1) I simply started ignoring and keeping my distance from them.  It's a choice to engage with negative people, it's a choice to let them get to us, and it's a choice whether we allow them to ruin it for the rest of us.  Although sometimes hard because you have to work with people, you don't have to go out of your way to hang out with them.  In time, I'm a believer humans figure out when their peers are clearly not fans of their attitude and behavior.

2) I made a conscious choice to hang out with those who keep me positive.  Utilizing my PLN and choosing to hang out with positive individuals who drown out the negative does amazing things for our mental well being.

3) I refocused my energies and work.  As an admin, we have many projects and tasks to complete.  I made a choice to prioritize anything that didn't involve certain people and move down the list the items that would require working with the nay-sayers.  Although not always realistic, as we often have to work with certain people, I was pleasantly surprised how much I could pull away and allow others to work with these folks.  I chose to focus my work on other areas and working with other people who share the same vision and goals as I do and remain positive and with a "yes" mentality.

In the end, we all encounter jokesters who just aren't part of the team vision and who seem to bring people down.  I've watched colleagues recently be affected negatively by the same crew, and hard to watch; however, my encouragement has been to ignore them.  We MUST keep doing the good work and can't let a couple negative people bring us down.  No matter what, find a way to tune out the negative people.  Our schools need us, our staff need us, and our students and families need us.  Keep fighting, and don't quit, and make the positive win out each and every day!