Why I Hate Musical Chairs

Day Three:

I consider myself to be a person that can handle stress pretty easily. I may even go as far as to say that it takes quite a bit for me to get stressed over something.

But for about 4 minutes this morning during the second period of the day I got stressed.

The stress started to seep in when a new student greeted me at the door telling me he was enrolling into the largest class I have. This class is so large that one table/desk is home to 3 students, instead of the usual pair. This class is so large that I had to request 3 more seats from the Plant Manager because there was already a student sitting on my stool instead of a chair, one on a borrowed chair from next door, and another using the chair from my desk.

Then a T.A. (student helper) was added to the class.

Then I got stressed.

Almost immediately I began to quietly complain about how lame it was that I had a class where 4 students didn’t have chairs and 3 didn’t have real desks.

Knowing that the Plant Manager probably couldn’t get chairs to me until later, I went back next door to see if there were any other chairs I could use for the period.

While I was next door I realized that whether I wanted it to or not, how I re-entered the classroom was going to be a lesson I would teach my students.

The questions rapidly revealed themselves:

Am I going to let this situation have me show that it’s okay to have a negative reaction to things when they don’t go as planned?
Or am I going to take control of myself and model that even when things don’t go as we planned them, we still have the choice, the power to generate a positive response.

For a moment I thought, “Forget what I teach them…I gotta get some chairs!”

But as I walked back into my class I realized that they deserved better than what I wanted to give.

After everyone was situated, after I took a few breaths, I addressed the class and explained that in life there will certainly be times where things will occur that we never could have anticipated; some of them good and some of them bad. And when the bad things happen, we have a choice.

Will we react negatively, or will we respond positively?

I went on to confess that I began to react to the chair situation rather than respond.

It felt good to be transparent with them, to share my frustration and realization. I felt like I seized upon a teachable moment, one we would never read about in our textbook. I hope it resonates with them.

I need it to resonate with me.

On the way home traffic was ridiculous. This naturally means there was that one driver switching through the lanes trying to advance the extra 20 feet per lane change, which of course means my frustration over the traffic quickly turned into stress-level anger over this driver.

Then my mind wandered back to my 2nd period and how it was short on seats.

Then I learned the lesson that I had tried to teach my students.

And then the traffic wasn’t so bad.


Looking forward to opportunities where I’ll get to practice my response…

J.C. León