How Good It Feels!

The best portion of a good life

is the little nameless

unremembered acts of kindness

and

of love

William Wordsworth

AN ACT OF KINDNESS FOR REFLECTION

Recently a very lovely friend of mine sent me this beautiful book on random acts of kindness. Just reading it brought me considerable joy. I want to share one of the stories and for you to reflect on what might have been your response to this situation...

AN ACT OF KINDNESS CAN SOMETIMES TAKE INCREDIBLE COURAGE.  I was at the country fair with my mother many years ago. I remember it was a very, very hot day and all around us children and parents were melting down. We were walking behind a woman with two small children. The children were crying and whining and the mother  was getting increasingly upset. Finally she started to scream at them to shut them up; then she turned around and struck them both very hard. Just to see this happen right in front of me made me feel like I had been hit as well.

Of course the kids started crying even more and the mother was on the verge of completely loosing control when my mother walked up to her, touched her arm, and said something like, "You poor dear, don't worry, sometimes things just get out of control for a moment". Then my mother offered to take the children over to the ice cream stand, buy them some ice cream, and sit with them while the woman took a little walk to compose herself. She returned about 10 minutes later, thanked my mother, hugged her children, and went on.

One hour or five minutes how long is your day?

Last night I was at a gathering of friends and family to celebrate my sister, brother and my birthdays.  As always within kiwi gatherings the conversation turned to what we do for employment.  Present were two accounts, a gym trainer, a technician within the kiwifruit industry and a lawn mowing contractor.  Each one of the them were lamenting over the fact that they do not really enjoy their jobs, when I piped up with a, “I love my job.”  “Alright”, Warren said, “it’s unanimous everyone hates their job except Lynn”.  Today I was revisiting some of those conversations in my head and the enormity of it struck me - imagine hating what you do!!!!!!

Sir Ken Robinson  talks about this on the TED videos  http://video.ted.com/talk/podcast/2010/None/SirKenRobinson_2010.mp4.  He says that people “endure it (their jobs) rather than enjoy it and wait for the weekend.  People who love what they do could not imagine doing anything else because they would say  it is who they are.”  He also talks about passion and how when we are doing something we love 1 hour can seem like 5 minutes or if you hate it 5 minutes can seem like 1 hour.  This video is well worth watching particularly if you feel a slight draining of your enthusiasm or passion for what you do.

I can not think of a day in my teaching career either at St Peters Childcare or with ELP that I have not wanted to go to work.  The enjoyment that I get from being around passionate teachers, meeting parents and working alongside children is just part of who I am and, like Sir Ken Robinson said, I could not imagine doing anything else.

The wonderful thing is that within my work I met many teachers who love their jobs and it shows.  Recently I was at Paddington’s in Hamilton. The teachers within the centre ooze enthusiasm and passion.  They want to know more, they want to do more and they love what they are doing.  Marie was describing part of one families day to me -this knowledge I think - this comes out of teachers really deeply knowing their families as she talked about the emotional struggle of parents.  For whatever reason one of the parents had started off their day in a bad space and this may have been compounded by the fact that they had to go to work and leave their precious child in the hands of someone else.  Marie was aware of the anxiety of the mother and the first opportunity she got she took a photo of the child with her cellphone while he was busy engaged in play and sent this to the mother at work with a personal message.  When the mother came in at the end of the day she said to Marie that this kind act took her day from a very low point into a much better place as she relax in the knowledge that her son was having a great day.    Obviously Marie’s passion as a teacher drives her to provide the best care for children and parents.

Passionate teachers will find ways to connect with children and families.  Bronfenbrenner would encourage us, just like Marie did, to care for, support and encourage the carers(parents, whānau) because this will create better outcomes for the children.

   

NEW YEARS RESOLUTION

I both look forward to and dread the arrival of the New Year.  Initially I look forward to catching up and celebrating with loved ones, counting down to midnight and the excitement about the year ahead, however, hovering in the background is the prospect of reflecting back on my often failure to achieve last year's resolution and the dread of setting a new one.

This year is going to be different!  Over the Christmas break I had a chance to reread ‘Tuesday’s with Morrie‘ by Mitch Albom.  It’s a wonderful book that had originally been given to me by my brother in a time when I needed inspiration. It's full of wise words from Mitch’s old professor Morrie Schwartz.

Every time I read this book a different quote speaks to me and this time it was this one:

“So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they're busy doing things they think are important. This is because they're chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.” (p.42)

The idea of ‘devoting myself to loving others, the community around me and to creating something that gives me purpose and meaning’ sounded to me like a perfect New Year's resolution.  It wasn’t going to be about loosing the weight I’d recently gained or getting fit by going to the gym 3 times a week, it was going to be about something deeper and more meaningful.

Now no resolution is going to be achieved without setting goals, again something my brother had taught me, so I am in the process of breaking down 2013 into individual months, beside each month I’m placing a goal, which again I break down into smaller tasks and aligning these against each individual week, so that I know exactly how I am going to reach my goal of keeping my New Year's resolution.

My challenge to you is to create your own New Year's resolution for work!  Find your own inspiration to take you past the mundane to something inspirational.  Are you able to discuss developing a goal as a team?  Look at pushing your boundaries, taking on what Carol Dweck calls a ‘growth mindset’.  

"Fixed mindset people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits. They spend their time documenting their intelligence or talent instead of developing them. They also believe that talent alone creates success—without effort. They’re wrong.

Growth mindset people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment. Virtually all great people have had these qualities." (Quote from http://mindsetonline.com/whatisit/about/index.html,  Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (2006) Ballantine Books)

Challenge YOURSELF!  Step outside YOUR comfort zone!  Look past just focusing on YOURSELF, then make YOUR plan!  

  I’d like to finish this blog with some more Morrie wisdom.

“As you grow, you learn more. If you stayed as ignorant as you were at twenty-two, you'd always be twenty-two. Aging is not just decay, you know. It's growth. It's more than the negative that you're going to die, it's the positive that you understand you're going to die, and that you live a better life because of it.” (p.117)

Happy New Year

Gillian

THINKING OF THE TEACHERS IN CHRISTCHURCH

 

We have just received the wonderful box of goodies from you all! WOW.... it almost reduced us to tears.....(especially me, as along with the earthquakes, i have helped nurse my terminally ill sister, who passed away in August).
It has been a very difficult time for all of us here in Christchurch, and my team has had to move from our ‘structurally unsafe’ building, into the school hall next door, then to our final ‘temporary’ home of two classrooms at Kendal School, where we continue to provide the best possible education and fun for our children and their families.

The past two years has shown us all, the true resilience of children, families and teachers, and proved that by leaning on each other, we can, and will make it through anything!!

Thank you all so much for brightening up our journey, and continuing to support and think of us, just when we thought we had been forgotten!!

THANK YOU ALL and Merry Christmas to you and yours, from all of us here at Kidsfirst Kindergartens Kendal Avenue.

Bernie Atger
Head Teacher

The final 'temporary' home at Kendal School

Classroom now set up as the kindergarten

Two classrooms make up our kindergarten