This past Friday was a horrible day for me. From my stand point as a teacher, I felt like there was nothing I did right the entire day. I was very flustered, disorganized, uninspiring, short tempered, and just not a very good teacher. I felt like I spent hours of time prepping a 50 minute lesson that looked like I took 15 minutes to plan…and the worst of all is I took my frustrations out on my students by having such a poor attitude the entire day. I was basically throwing a temper-tantrum because things were not going my way.

While I was getting ready for my cross country period, my last class of the day, I noticed something while I was waiting in the hallway. I saw a co-worker who I knew was also having a bad day, and this teacher was absolutely yelling at the top of her lungs at her students because someone had threw a bottle cap or something silly like that. While I was standing there the only thing that crossed my mind was “wow…is it really that big of a deal?” But I realized that what I was seeing was exactly what I was acting out the previous 5 hours of that day.

I have been doing a lot of thinking this weekend, mainly about how I’m going to show up on Monday and do a better job. As I think about all my short comings of one day and turn it in to a career ending event (at least in my head), I realize that in the grand scheme of things it is just one day. I know that when my students show up tomorrow the furthest thing from their minds will be how “good” our class was on Friday, even though that will be the only thing I think of. I’m not so naive to think that my 8th grade social studies class is going to be a life changing event for my students, but I like to treat my class in this manner…I want my class to be something special.

The bottom line is I want a better education for my students. I constantly think of the things that turned me off from school when I was their age and that is my motivation to try harder at my profession. I could very easily be an average teacher and just do the bare minimum but I don’t want to, I want to have days like Friday where I just absolutely crush myself for having an off day. I want to be disappointed in myself from time to time because I’m not content with the job I’m doing as a teacher. As stupid as it sounds, I love being miserable occasionally because I know eventually it will lead to fantastic outcomes in my life and hopefully my students lives as well…and more importantly, I want them to be able to see that I care through my instruction.

I suppose because I’m such a gluten for punishment that makes me ideal for the teaching profession…here’s to a better week.

Mr. McClung