Counselor’s Corner - January 25, 2023 Issues
Dear Teacher,
It's been one of those weeks (as shown by this two-day-late newsletter), where I head-butted my way through my daily calendar. Meetings gone too long caused other scheduled meetings to forfeit. Projects due two weeks ago remain untouched. Looming deadlines have me scrambling. It feels like nothing in the month of January has been planned for, prepared well, or purpose-driven.
And you, teacher, there in your classroom, can relate, too. You know about those stacks of ungraded papers, unreturned parental communications, and overdue departmental reports. Your attention constantly ratchets from School Board Chairman demands, student maladaptive behaviors, and surprise superintendent visits. You operate at high stress level, low bandwidth, and minimum self-care.
However, in the midst of those days (or weeks), Press Pause and Pause the Pressing.
I did. This week, I made a conscious choice to put a pause on all the "secondaries" that come with education, and focus on the "primary" reason why I got into education in the first place. In my moment of overwhelm, I chose to remind myself of all the goodness that was in front of me (literally, since little faces peering into my office window while I was trying to Zoom meetings).
Press Pause and Pause the Pressing.
I went to the lunchroom and had fifty separate conversations about what students were eating for lunch, what they'd liked most about that days' Chapel experience, and who their best friend was that day. I walked the high school hallways during transition time and gave out fist bumps, side hugs, and Jolly Ranchers. I put a pause on the pressing and invested in the important.
In the heat of your ministry with the demands and to-dos that press in on you, take a page from Jesus' playbook where He "went to an isolate place by Himself" [Matthew 14:13]. He pressed pause and paused the pressing! To do so doesn't mean you have to be all alone, students unattended, world silenced. To do so simply means to shift your focus from curriculum to child, task to togetherness, responsibilities to responsiveness. Drink in the meaning for why you do this hard work, so you're better able to swallow the method for how you do this hard work.
Grateful for why and how you do what you do,
Mindy Salyers
Christian School Counselor