Thoughts about “teacher week...”This is “teacher week” for me. A time to get my room ready for the beginning of the year and meet with my colleagues. I used this week as an opportunity to practice a full week of my new yearly theme, the Year of “Right.” The apps I’ve mentioned previously, Due, Breathe, and HiFutureSelf have been pushing gentle and kind notifications (again see previous posts) to me all week long and I am really impressed with the impact they've had on me mentally and spiritually. I have been very purposeful about “right intention,” “right action,” “right effort,” and “right livelihood in my job.” This purposefulness took the form of me going out of my way to be helpful to others. Whether it was moving furniture, adjusting the furniture for people who could not move it, sharing documents I use in my classroom, letting others take pictures of things in my room that they liked and wanted to make their own, or volunteering to be my grade level’s chairperson...I tried really hard to be helpful. It felt good each time I practiced it too!That said...there is a fine line between being helpful and doing someone else’s job. That is something that I can slip into doing at times...being more helpful than I should. This is good for the people I choose to help but it puts a strain on me and I want to do a better job of NOT doing other people’s jobs for them. This can lead to tense moments “in the room” when others are expecting me (because they know how nice I can be) to go above and beyond and do things for them. I did not do that this week. Call it tough love! Call it...compassion.I’m feeling really good about how things went this week and am looking forward to the first day with students next week.