I needed my OLW today.
When I walked into school this morning, I should have felt refreshed after a long weekend. Alas, it had been a busy weekend and I awoke this morning at three, things swirling in my head. As I entered my room, I felt a little overwhelmed by all the things I needed to do today.
I chose steady as my word for 2023. When I feel overwhelmed or as though there is too much to do, I often recite the moral from Aesop’s The Hare and the Tortoise: slow and steady wins the race.
I remember seeing a saying on the wall in someone’s house when I was a kid. It said, “The hurrier I go, the behinder I get.” I thought it funny as a kid – I knew the grammar was wrong and this might be one of my earliest memories of word play. Now, decades later, I appreciate the sentiment to the saying.
My room felt warm this morning. As I felt myself getting wound up by the needs of the day, I looked over at the bulletin board where I had posted my word, and the words of my students. They too had chosen a word of the year. When we made them the first week back, I told that that when they felt stressed or overwhelmed, they could look at their word on the wall and get themselves back on track. Mine got me there this morning.
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