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danielle@teachingwell.life
danielle@teachingwell.life
This month’s happiness focus is a big deal for me. You see, I’m not too crazy. I’m not overly adventurous. I’m often found feeling like I’m the fun police trying to ruin everyone’s good time with my serious schedule and never-ending to do list. Adventurous is watching a movie on Friday night and crawling into bed at 9 to read my book instead of at 8 (like on most other nights!).
Going to bed early and being organized is one thing, but I often find myself scheduling everything. If I were prone to scheduling “fun” into my day, week, or month perhaps this month wouldn’t be on the calendar, but alas fun rarely makes it legitimately on the Google calendar. Sure, we schedule some activities that happen to be fun, but schedule and spontaneity rarely coexist. So this month is all about adding some fun into my life.
I joked with a group of people that March is my month of learning to have fun and to kick it off the first thing I’m going to do to have fun is to read a book about play.
Yep, that’s right…I have already planned to read a book about play in order to have more fun during this month of trying to have fun.
Hopefully the rest of the month shapes up to be a little more exciting and spontaneous than that!
So here are my resolutions for March: the month of Play and Fun!
I’d like to go on more walks, meander, go down streets I don’t normally go down. Explore some new places in the area. Maybe just go for a drive and see where the road takes me.
Weather permitting, I’d love to take my classes outside and do some lessons in some natural light, or just take a walk and debrief about what we’re learning.
I absolutely love to read and learn but this month I’m going to really try to read about new topics that may catch my eye. Often, I will read everything about a topic that I’m interested in and get overwhelmed by information overload. This month, I want to spend some time at the library just reading about topics that I find curious without having a plan about how this information fits into the grand scheme of my life.
This could easily transfer to school…as an English teacher I try to encourage students to find an appreciation for reading through actually reading things they are interested in. By talking about my adventures in discovering new ideas, maybe they will feel a little inspired too!
I’m hoping that my book will give me some great tips for how to laugh more (haha), but until I read it from cover to cover, I will stick to the basics (that I may have neglected lately)…
-Watch funny movies
-Go to a comedy show
-Be around little kids
-Plan a game night with friends
-Take Lily to the dog park
I will continue working on this list and I will report back about which things I was able to experience in these next 30 days.
More importantly, I want to find some fun and joy in my classroom. With the pressures of fitting in curriculum, grading, finishing projects, I leave little room for fun and play. This will be a goal of mine this month: How do I balance the demands of my classroom with giving my students the gift of play, fun and spontaneity.
This resolution is clearly…to be continued!
I’m really at a loss for this one…both in my personal life and in the classroom. I mean I could certainly think of some things that I could do that may be unexpected but they could also be dangerous or illegal or both. And I love my job, so I wouldn’t want to unexpectedly go home early or unexpectedly not show up for work one day.
So, this will be another place where I will surprise not only you, dear readers, but I may even surprise myself on what I will do this month that will be both unexpected but also bring my joy, happiness and a feeling of play!
I am looking forward to this month of schedule play and fun! It’s out of my comfort zone to try to be spontaneous so the results may be less than startling to those of you who are naturally gregarious. If you are interested in learning more, check out the entire Teaching Well Happiness Project blog. If you think of any great ideas during this month please comment below or email me and I will be sure to report back dutifully when my scheduled fun time comes to a close!