The Power of Filling Buckets

So it's been awhile since my last post. Apparently I am struggling more than I thought with time management! Pretty ironic since that was my last post. I am still tracking what I do but, as is expected, so much happens that you can't plan!

A couple of my friends and I were talking the other night at dinner (they are newish teachers) and it occurred to me just how much outside work is done in the first years of working in education. I don't even have to plan out instruction for whole days and I am exhausted. I have an idea what they are going through because I spend most of my free time researching new activities to do with students, adapting my "curriculum" lessons because they were only meant to be a first draft and were therefore not complete, or perusing the internet for any and all ideas to plan out the rest of my year. Finding the right lessons and/or approaches is SO MUCH WORK! Not that I am not willing to do it but I have to give MAD props to people who did it without the digital world at the fingertips. I am forever grateful for pintrest and a plethora of other blogs that I can rely on to help give me ideas and lessons!

I am working with one 2nd grade class specifically and I was feeling lost as to how to best help them because what they really needed was to feel a sense of community. After a few weeks of random lessons I decided to read, Have you filled a bucket today? by Carol McCloud. The students really connected with it! Next week we are introducing a wall with buckets for each student and we will practice filling buckets. I know the teacher and an aide really liked it and it occurred to me how little bucket filling happens at a school. We are so busy focusing on students, complaining about things not working and fighting off sleep deprivation, that I think we fail to remember how much we need positives to keep us going!

Then I got an email from another counselor in my district just checking in on me. IT MADE MY DAY!! Because yesterday was kind of rough on my confidence and I was starting to feel lost, just her offer of help made me feel better. So go out and smile at people. Say thank you. Be models of bucket filling for my students, they sure need it!