After a time away from this project, I am back on a regular basis in a school working with kids. It’s a new and temporary role: elementary school PE teacher at a Title 1 School in Portland, Maine. While I’m finding the beginning of this new venture incredibly overwhelming, voice-annihilating, and fatigue-inducing, I am also deeply enjoying building relationships with new students and learning more intimately how to apply mindfulness to this new context. So I’m picking up where I left off at the end of last school year in hopes that my experience can continue to serve.
photo cred: Lidya Nada on Unsplash
Upon starting this new role as elementary PE teacher, I have been really focused on how to support kids in having a safe and orderly PE experience. It turns out the high levels of energy evoked in PE class seem on the verge of brimming over to full fledged chaos at any moment in some of these tiny bodies, and sometimes does. So I’ve been focused on routines, structure, consequences, and logistics.
When I attended my first professional development this year, focused on behavior management basics, there was one message I took away loud and clear: we must bring joy and playfulness to our roles. I was struck by how that felt like it was missing in my need to create order, and how important that was for me simply to sustain my practice. Of course. Joy.
When I went in the next morning, I inserted small moments of silliness. As part of my call-and-response, I had kids silent clap. We did dolphin breaths and cake breaths. I even laughed when I was trying to give directions and a girl had a bucket over her head. Because… I needed to. We all needed to. Of course, there’s an art to allowing in these moments without having them devolve. And it’s a balance I am working on cultivating.
But I will say this: I went home that day and felt the best I had yet. The kids weren’t any different. I was. And it felt great.
I invite you to plant those moments throughout your day to laugh and grin and enjoy.