A long while ago, I discovered a blog post by a person named C Mielke, and it struck me to my core. I would like to publicly thank C Mielke for changing how I deal with my students, each and every day. I took the message (without permission ... sorry) and personalized it to my own situation. Each semester since I have discovered these words, I have started day one by getting my students to read this short blurb, then discussing what it means to them.It's the eve of another school year and it’s late at night. I’ve struggled for the last hour to go to sleep, but I can’t. I am tossing and turning, unable to shut down my brain. Why? I am a teacher and I’m stressed about my students. I mean REALLY stressed. I’m so stressed that I am forced from the security of my bed to write down what I really want to say ... the real truth I’ve been needing to say ... and vow to myself that I will let my students hear what I REALLY think!
Firstly, you all need to know right from the start that I care about you … ALL of your teachers care about you, or we would choose to teach. In fact, we might care about you more than you may care about yourself at times. we care not just about your grades or your test scores, but about YOU as a person. Since we care, I would like to be honest with you, both in what I say and how I say it.
Here’s the thing: Your teachers lose sleep because of you. Each and every week. Before I tell you why, you should understand the truth about school. You see, the main event of school is not academic learning. It never has been. It never will be. Properly motivated, you can learn about anything at any time. And, if you find someone who is passionate in claiming that it IS about academics, that person is lying to him or herself and may genuinely believe that lie. Yes, math, essay writing, civics, science are all are important and worth knowing ... but they are not the MAIN event.
The main event is learning how to deal with the harshness of life when it gets difficult ... how to overcome problems as simple as a forgotten locker combination, to obnoxious peers, to gossip, to people doubting you, to asking for help in the face of self-doubt, to pushing yourself to concentrate when a million other thoughts and temptations are fingertips away. It is your resilience in conquering the main event ... adversity ... that truly prepares you for life after school. Mark these words, school is NOT the most challenging time you will have in life. You will face far greater challenges than these. You will have times more amazing than you could possibly imagine, but you will also be confronted with incomparable tragedy, frustration, and fear in the years to come, sometimes by yourself and sometimes with help.
You shouldn’t be worried about the fact that you will face great adversity. You should be worried because you’re setting yourself up to fail at overcoming it. Here’s the real reason your teachers lose hours of sleep worrying about you; you are failing the main event of school. You are quitting. You may not think you are quitting, but you are because quitting wears many masks.
For some, you quit by throwing the day away and not even trying to write a sentence or solve a problem or do a push up because you think it doesn’t matter or you can’t or there’s no point. BUT IT DOES. What you write is not the main event, but the fact that you do take charge of your own fear and doubt IN ORDER to write when you are challenged — THAT is the main event.
Some quit by skipping class on a free education. Being punctual to fit the mold of the classroom is not the main event. The main event is delaying your temptations and investing in your own intelligence; understanding that sometimes short-term pain creates long-term gain and that great people make sacrifices for a greater good.
For others, you quit by being rude and disrespectful to adults or peers who ask you to come to class, prepared to learn. Listening to others is not the main event. The main event is learning how to problem solve maturely, not letting your judgment be tainted by the stains of emotion.
Some of you quit by choosing not to take opportunities to work harder and pass a class, no matter how far down you are. The main event is not getting a number that tells you that you’re successful. The main event is pulling your crap together and making hard choices and sacrifices when things seem impossible. It is finding hope in the hopeless, courage in the chasm, guts in the grave. What you need to see is that every time you take the easy way out, you are building a habit of quitting. That habit will destroy your future by annihilating your happiness, if you choose to let it.
Our society cares nothing for quitters. Life will let you die alone, depressed, and poor if you can’t rise up enough to deal with hardship. To quote Yoda, “Do or Do Not … There is no try.” You either resist adversity and grow stronger or blow in the wind and erode.
As long as you are in my life, I am not going to let quitting be easy for you. I am going to challenge you, confront you, push you, and coach you. You can whine. You can throw a tantrum. You can shout and swear and pout and cry. And the next day, guess what? I will be at the classroom door waiting, smiling and patient, ready to give you a fresh start because you are worth it.
So, do yourself a favour and step up. No more excuses. No more justifications. No blaming. No quitting. Just pick your head up, rip those Earpods out of your ears, put that gosh darned phone away and let’s do this … TOGETHER!
Personalized and reprinted from AffectiveLiving.com by C Mielke
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