Star Teacher

Dear Teachers,

To me, the start of a new year is always exciting and encouraging—the same feeling I get whenever I open a brand new notebook (a pretty one of course). The crisp, blank pages greet me with so much possibility, so much promise of ideas, stories, and maybe even notes from friends. Sometimes I keep a new notebook on my desk for years, opening it and looking through the blank sheets, wondering what to put in it. Afraid that if I just scribble notes from a meeting, I’d ruin the anticipation and its potential for being used for something better, something more meaningful.

The same goes for any start of any new year for me. When I don’t give it some thought and just plunge into the year with everything I used to do the year before, it’s just the same as fi lling up a beautiful new notebook with telephone numbers to remember, boring to-do lists, and maybe even what to order for takeout. But when I take a few days to refl ect on how I want my year to go, I come up with resolutions and promises to myself.

This year, I realized that I want to go about it differently. Instead of writing something like, “Go to the dentist,” I want to have only one resolution and that is to take care of myself. Sounds selfish? Not really. Here’s why. In this issue of Star Teacher, we have two articles that can change how you behave in the classroom. One is an article on the difference between verbal abuse and discipline. The other introduces the concept of positive discipline and how you can prepare and ready yourself to make it your fi rst instinct in dealing with your students. What did I learn from these two articles? First and foremost, you need to take care of yourself. If you are tired, overworked, distracted, and in a terrible mood, you can’t even begin to practice positive discipline. Your fi rst reaction when a child misbehaves is to snap at him and maybe even sentence him to the back of the classroom. Negative discipline and verbal abuse all in one go. And all because you couldn’t help yourself.

This is why it makes sense to fi ll your own personal love tank before you can give any love to your students. This issue takes my resolution one step further with an article on 31 ways (one for each day of the month!) to motivate yourself and give your imagination and creativity a push in the right direction. You’ll be amazed at how doing something totally different can open your mind and make you feel like a whole new person. You can motivate yourself to do anything, but what’s important is that you focus on rebuilding what the past year’s stress, fatigue, and emotional upheavals have taken away from you.

Before this year ends, I am going to open up the pretty, blank notebook that has been waiting patiently on my desk and I am going to write ways I will take care of myself in 2011. But I am going to take it one step further. Each day, I will also write how I took care of myself and how that translated into taking care of others.

What’s your New Year’s story, dear teacher? Write me and we can support each other as this year of possibilities begins.

I’m here for you at ines.yao@summitmedia.com.ph