Maybe it’s all the COVID statistics and the fact that this virus isn’t leaving any time soon. Maybe it’s all the election coverage with the endless ads on TV, social media, and in the mail. Maybe it’s just that I’m exhausted! But whatever the reason: I’m finding myself in a slump with every day seeming like just another version of Groundhog Day. If I’m feeling that way, I know my students are feeling it too.

So it’s time (and maybe past time) for me to stop, re-evaluate, and figure out how to bring the joy back to my classroom. If I can do it there, it will make a difference for me which will then make a difference for my kids.

First of all — I highly recommend this great article “Joy in School” by Steven Wolk. (If you don’t want to read the whole article, stay tuned to this blog because I’m going to summarize it and apply it to COVID-19 teaching and Learning soon.)

One of my favorite literacy gurus is Regie Routman. I have been a fan of hers for many years and I highly recommend every one of her books . In her latest book Literacy Essentials: Engagement, Excellence, and Equity for All Learners, she lists “joyfulness” as one of the ten key factors for excellent teaching. She describes joyful teachers who “fully engage with students in a manner that demonstrates and ignites passion and inspiration for learning.”

So yeah – I know all that but I wasn’t doing all that. Time for a change. I’m sharing a few ideas but I hope you will let me know what works for you! We’re all in this together and we need to support each other with reassurance and great ideas.

1 – Stop and accept yourself and your feelings right now. Teaching is always exhausting work but with the added stresses of virtual learning or hybrid learning or face-to-face learning but with masks and distancing and all the rest — this is more exhausting than ever. It’s perfectly normal to be tired. It’s perfectly normal to be tired of it all! Just accept that this is how you feel right now and that it’s okay. Accept yourself and your feelings, just as they are.

2 – Do a brain dump of all the things that frustrate you, all the things you hate, all the things that keep you from enjoying your life right now. You might think that this would only make things worse, but getting all the “stuff” out of your head and onto the page is tremendously helpful. You don’t have to keep what you wrote! Keep it or trash it. The benefit lies in getting all those swirling, anxious thoughts out of your head.

3 – Do some yoga stretches or simple calisthenics. This is not a fitness routine. This is just a way to get the blood flowing, get you moving, and changing your mental state. Physical exercise releases the neurotransmitters dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin, which helps to regulate your mood.

4 – Take a walk. Outside if possible. This gets you out of your work environment and releases those same neurotransmitters.

5 – Meditate, even for only three minutes. My favorite app for that is Headspace, but you don’t need an app. Just sit or lie down, close your eyes, and focus on your breath. When thoughts come in (which they will), let them go and return your focus to your breathing.

6 – Read some fiction. Get out of your world and into another world. My current favorites are Elin Hilderbrand’s Winter in Paradise trilogy and This Secret Thing by Marybeth Mayhew Whalen. (If you’re looking for some excellent nonfiction, I recommend Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson.)

7 – Watch some uplifting show on Netflix or whatever other streaming service you can access. My current favorite is season four of Somebody Feed Phil!

8 – Think of what would usually bring you joy in the classroom in a regular year and do more of that. For me, it’s reading aloud to my students. This week, we had an unexpected schedule change (due to some local storms and power outages). Instead of plowing ahead with that day’s lesson, we read some North Carolina ghost stories from a book I had available. My kids loved it and are now begging for more read alouds. Somehow the change of schedule and change of routine boosted all of our moods.

9 – On Friday, we celebrated Halloween and Day of the Dead. We aren’t usually allowed to hardly even mention holidays in our classrooms (don’t get me started on that), but my team and I decided the heck with it: we’re going to celebrate.

Our students are working so hard and have missed out on so many fun events of our regular classroom and school life. They can’t even go trick or treating door to door in our community this year. So we played spooky music, we did a guessing game where we gave each other clues about our costumes (got that idea from the amazing third-grade team at my school), we even wore our costumes all day long.

Our math practice featured problems with candy, we read about holiday traditions and the history of these holidays for our reading lesson, and then we played Kahoot and Quizizz games to review what we learned from the reading passages.

At the end of the day, my students said it had been the “best day ever.” I think that just changing up the routine is what did the trick. Now we’re going to feature more unexpected “fun” days whenever we can.

10 – Feature gratitude and appreciation in your class routines whenever possible. We share “brags and drags” or “roses and thorns” from the day or from the weekend. We share one thing we are grateful for as a regular morning meeting circle question. We share an appreciation for someone else in the class as part of morning circle or in the end of day routine. I ask them to “tell me something good” in the chatbox. Any possible way to keep our focus on what is going well, what we do enjoy, what is good about our life together right now will keep us all in a more positive frame of mind.

“Joy is the main event.” ~Regie Routman

Find a way to bring the joy back to teaching and learning. It matters — for you and for your students. Please share your own strategies!

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