Choosing Joy During A Pandemic

During a recent guided meditation, my sage invited us to picture in our minds a room of significance. She encouraged us to map the layout, the shelves, the furnishings—the sights and smells that brought this memory to life. 

I found myself back in my Seventh Grade classroom, the home of my first full-time lead teaching position. Wandering the space in my mind’s eye, I saw perfectly the rows of desks, the back table full of art supplies, the closets housing students’ backpacks and athletic bags. I recalled the portraits of my heroes that I had around the room—Mother Theresa, Mahatma Gandhi, Cesar Chavez, Rosa Parks—and the rear bulletin board which highlighted my classroom theme each year. I remembered the time that a student left a container of guacamole in their desk during Christmas break and the bridal shower my class hosted for me when I got married. The palpable excitement that radiated when making Paper Mache globes, dressing up for the Halloween parade, or celebrating the last day of school. 

Returning there was like visiting an old friend. And, after being away from my current school’s campus for well over 100 days, the memories of my first middle school classroom nourished me.

Class continued, and towards the end, our guide left us with a parting quote:

“Choose joy.”

A very poignant statement in the midst of our global pandemic and civil unrest here in the United States, it got me thinking about the messaging that I used to deliver to my students in that very classroom I recalled. Directives that encouraged them to see the silver lining, focus on opportunities for growth not failures, love themselves and those around them. Lessons, novels, curriculum that sought to show them how easy it was to choose to be kind.

Now, no one is saying that this was an easy task. Working with middle school students, I would often find that my general optimistic outlook was met with reticence.  Very few of these students were actually trying to be obstinate with the intention of being obstinate. Adolescent angst is just part of the developmental journey, but I refused to be deterred knowing that, in the end, my pursuit of positivity would win over even the toughest of skeptics.

It wasn’t easy, that’s for sure. But nothing worthwhile in life ever really is. And besides, I’ve always been a glass-half-full kind of girl.

So, how did I aim to increase my students’ capacity for joy, and what strategies can you use at home to achieve the same?

“Hate gives us ulcers and wrinkles.” That’s how I would respond when someone in my class uttered the phrase “I hate ---.” It didn’t matter if it was a classmate who was annoying them, a food group they detested, the novel we were reading in class, or the Vocabulary quiz I was giving on Friday. The word hate was simply not allowed. I’d use a quippy remark to draw my students into a bigger conversation about the word. We’d talk about the destruction caused by hate. The wars and conflicts, the desecration of humanity stemming from that word. I’d acknowledge that they were entitled to strongly dislike something—the peanut butter sandwich their mom packed them for lunch that day, for example—but that they should never harden their hearts with hatred.

How do you hold your children accountable for  a higher level of language? Do you take responsibility for what you say and about whom you say it? 

No? 

Not to worry, it’s never too late. Take a step back and evaluate how you can model for your kids words, phrases, and jargon that seek to create a joy-filled mindset. And, when you don’t like something, get creative with the way that you express it and make that a rule for your entire family. It will take some getting used to at first, but the positive momentum created will be a long-lasting catalyst for reframing your kids’ view of the world.

Make everything a big deal.

National Donut Day—yep, we celebrated it. A sensory writing activity with Twinkies and Ding Dongs—yeah, that happened, too. We rewrote the lyrics to popular songs, did an in-depth study on how to create an advertising campaign for an original product of my students’ own design, and spent five weeks deep diving into understanding the rights of the disabled in the United States.  Sure, each of these activities were peppered against a landscape of more mundane tasks—like, sentence diagramming, the analysis of literary devices, and the dissection of parts-of- speech. But, the key to any lesson’s success—whether in the classroom or in life itself—is to champion it. Make it a big deal. Usher it in the door with confetti and a marching band of excitement that gets even the most apathetic of audiences to give their jaded negation a moment of pause.

I’m pretty confident that my students will tell you that I love to talk about grammar. That I can wax poetic on the writing process and the use of descriptive language. That my heart literally skips a beat when I get to read, edit, and discuss with a student their written narration. The truth is, if we don’t let our kids see that the minutiae of our day-to-day goings on sparks joy, then how can we expect them to foster within themselves this reaction and response? You don’t have to break out the pom poms every time you serve mashed potatoes at dinner (I mean, you certainly can, if you want to!). But, you can create inflection in your voice when you announce what your child “gets” to do instead of what they “have” to do, whether you get an eye roll nonetheless.

• “You don’t have to help me set the table, but you do get to, and I am so grateful to you for it.”

• “We don’t have to study together for your Science test tomorrow, but we do get to, and there is nothing that I would rather do than help your brain grow in knowledge.”

• “You don’t have to go to your sister’s soccer game this weekend, but you do get to because it will help to build her confidence and feel encouraged.”

Replace the displaced. So often a student would lash out—at me, at a classmate, at a parent—and, I would work with them to determine the source of their frustration. Was my asking them to write down their homework at the end of the day really the straw that sent them into a catastrophic meltdown? Was the classmate sitting in front of them, passing back a stack of papers a little too slowly for their liking, worth the impending fallout that came from snapping at them and having the papers end up strewn around the room? Did their mom’s suggestion to wear a jacket in the rain really warrant the slammed car door? 

Nope. 

Patience is a virtue and one that we must overtly model for our kids. Because, with patience comes joy. With self-control comes appreciation. With tolerance comes acceptance and love. So, when I asked my student to take a deep breath and try their response to me again; when I instructed them to pick up the papers that went flailing across the room and write a letter of apology to the classmate they criticized; when I had them go to the office and call their mom to thank her for loving them and looking out for their best interests—well, in each of these places and spaces, I was replacing their displaced aggression with that of kindness, instead. 

Choose joy. 

It can be extremely challenging in these stressful times. It can appear to be an insurmountable task as we seek to juggle mask wearing and homeschooling while working from home and worrying about the fractured state of humanity and what life is going to look like in a post-COVID reality. But, the truth is, this is the best time to join our kids on an adventure, armed with our rose colored glasses, to find the reasons to be glad.