Pas•sion

Pronunciation: \ˈpa-shən\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Late Latin passion-, passio suffering, being acted upon, from Latin pati to suffer — more at PATIENT
Date: 13th century
4 a (1): EMOTION (2) plural: the emotions as distinguished from reason b: intense, driving, or overmastering feeling or conviction c: an outbreak anger
5 a: ardent affection: LOVE b: a strong liking or desire for or devotion to some activity, object, or concept d: an object of desire or deep interest

Most grownups have lost this wonderful emotion, we are no longer holding a strong liking or desire towards anything, let alone the little things in life, such as eating homemade brownies, wearing your favorite outfit or your favorite color, granted, reason is needed as adults, so the difficult decisions are made, the bills paid and our responsibilities met, but must we lose the “intense driving, or overmastering feeling or conviction”?

One of my favorite things of my little ones is their amazing passion, they are still intense about their surroundings, their life, what they eat, how they dress, who they are. Shouldn’t we be more like them? Let’s be more intense and less reasonable, let’s get overmastered by a feeling or conviction, this world could use it.

1

There is always one, one you try and try, but nothing works, behavior charts, traffic lights, stickers, stamps and the always polemical time out, since we’ve tried and tried, we become frustrated and tired at times, maybe it’s the end of the year syndrome but at some point we stop trying, we think maybe the child is just unchangeable, so we give up.

This happens because we don’t see the change, the evolution that has happen, we just focus on the parts of the behavior we feel are the same since the beginning, we feel we haven’t help, that all of our efforts and work have been pointless, but there was, it might be small, it might be unnoticed to us, so we need to take a step back, we need to look at the big picture and realize that not all changes are big and fast, some are small, they take time and patience.

So, I vote that we take a break, we take that step back, think about the start of the year and where we are now, and in that we will see it, we will find the glimpse of the change, what keeps us trying and finding new ways and methods so we can do more than just be there.

Staff Meetings

I choose to start with this, because while I find them terribly long and at points a tad ridiculous, I love me a staff meeting.

I particularly noticed today, because it was the last for the school year and I realized I'll miss them, I will miss discussing the committees, I will miss talking through things that we find important and that non-teachers would never understand, I will miss watching my coworkers get passionate about trashcans, jammed doors, fun week and so on.

It's impossible to explain what happens in staff meetings, at least for me, I find them chaotic at times, specially during the discussion of certain committees, some can create such tension in a room, then there's the times that we are kind all over the place, there's always someone who chooses to fight about little details (Though for a preschool teacher there are no little details) "No new cardboard?!" and there's always lost and asking the usuals "What happened? What did she say?" just 2 examples of the many things that happen in our staff meetings, sometimes they all happen at the same time.

But this one was different, this one had a sense of nostalgia, the 2 WEEKS LEFT deadline is actually hitting us and for some that meant the rush that comes with the end of the school year so close, all the things we have to accomplish, turn in, prepare, decorate and on top of that teach before we end it, but for others is the sense that we have to say goodbye to our children, that in 2 WEEKS they're gone for the summer and when they come back they will no longer be with us and that is not a feeling we're all ready to deal with.

Staff meetings as long and dragged out as they can become, they're important to remind us that in the chaos that is ending a school year, the mess we lived through (and survived) we do it for them, we did it for them, for their smiles, for their accomplisments, because at the end of the day, they're the reason for it all.