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3) To stay encouraged: attending church, keeping things in perspective, seeking advice from experienced and wise people, paying attention to the victories just like I pay attention to the challenges, seeking other people’s perspectives on matters that make me feel concerned, reading and rereading encouraging material (please see my booklist of encouraging reads for teachers), including this scripture-based poem about boundaries, joy, and being positive that I wrote in 2004 that I still read frequently to this day, etc.

4) To help myself avoid destructive stress: eliminating or at least reducing as much as possible the HASSLES related to tasks at home and work. In one of my psychology classes at Harvard, we learned that after major events like the death of a loved one, job loss, etc., it’s actually HASSLES that are the number one source of stress and debilitating frustration. To repeatedly forge through hassles versus eliminating/reducing them is, in the long run, usually a mistake.

An important hassle to eliminate is the hassle of having to re-provide and re-provide information and forms again and again and again in person, via email, etc. to 100+ people (students, their parents, etc.). This can easily become a crazy-maker! Providing an initial classroom handbook and maintaining a stream-lined website with posted handouts (being careful to adhere to copyright laws), secured grades, news, etc. is so much less of a hassle. Even adopting an “I don’t give out additional copies or repeat statements and information” is a hassle if you feel any twinge of guilt/regret behind saying it (and/or re-saying it). It really has helped me to be able to put the responsibility of regaining the information back onto those who have lost the handout or forgotten the information or weren’t paying attention initially. This way, the information is regained (which prevents OTHER hassles from developing), but not at my expense.

Losing things can be a major hassle, especially for a teacher in the current era of school accountability. It can be overwhelming the number of pieces of paper a teacher handles in one day. To eliminate the hassle of worrying about the location and submission of important papers, I have specific spots and procedures for papers by category.

continued . . .