In my attempt to find happiness again in my teaching career I asked this question “What wasn’t I expecting to happen while teaching that had a deep affect on me?”  I came up with quite a long list and it surprised me how off base it felt from what I thought teaching would be. Below is the bulleted list.

I wasn’t expecting for students to:

• not want to learn
• not want to practice to get better skills for training horses
• expect me to yell and scream to get their attention
• be disrespectful to horses and people
• be neglectful of their horses care and health
• quit on their dreams
•  fight amongst themselves to the point that it affected the classroom
• lie or give so many excuses
• be so willing to fail and to be ok with failing
• be so entitled
• put judgement on me for pushing them to step up and excel
• skip class just because it gets hard
• expect me to pass work that’s not up to par yet
• want me to stroke their egos
• be as angry as they are
• let pride get in the way of learning
• think that they know more than me about what I’m teaching
• hate me or have a real dislike for me (I’m mostly a really nice person)
• tell me those who can’t do teach (this was only one incident but it still hurts)

Just writing this list takes me up and down the scale of emotions. But none of them lead me to the emotion of happiness that I’m so in love with. So my next question was “What did you expect from teaching?”. Here is where it gets interesting, I was expecting students to be like me!

I expected them to:

• crave learning
• practice until it hurt and then practice some more
• show up even when you’re  failing
• always put the horses needs first
• focus on yourself and leave others alone
• love being challenged to step up a level
• be respectful of others
• know that the next action step is the only way to get what you want
• know that your intrinsic self is what you should focus on
• never give up on a dream, in fact fight for it
• look at pride as the things you do and are proud of accomplishing
• never ever tear someone down who’s trying to help you
• want to be better tomorrow than you are today
• only measure yourself against yourself
• be joyful about riding and training horses

It turns out that most of the student population doesn’t yet value what I value and maybe it’s a pipe dream to think that someday they could see it my way. What I do know is that I’m not willing to lower my standards.

My favorite song is You Get What You Give by New Radicals ….”you got the music in you, don’t give up” Follow your heart, have grit, be polite to others and believe in your dreams and yourself. If you got this far please drop a comment below and tell me what you value. Have a joyful life!