Chapter 6: Like Basketball...We Are Always on the Rebound

Week 6 for me was short because the county public speaking contest and a seminar at Penn State kept me out of the classroom on Thursday and Friday. However, I still have plenty to discuss. This week is all about rebounding or coming back stronger and better prepared after failure.

Last Monday, was the first day where I felt like I was a terrible teacher, that my lessons did not go over very well, and that it was a constant battle to make it through the day.

The day just imploded, like the atomic bomb. (But as my cooperating teacher told me, from my perspective it was much worse than reality)

It was one of those days where I kept asking myself "what did I do wrong and what should have I done differently." I was so concentrated on the bad of the day and how I had failed, instead of looking at it as a great lesson to have experienced and learned. I could tell that from period to period, it was becoming harder and harder to be positive and have a good class because I wasn't letting that failure go. Instead, it was festering.

Thus, the lesson for this week. Just like basketball, rebounding is key.

Sometimes we take a shot in the dark for certain lessons. If it succeeds, great. If not, rebounding is how you come back from a failure and keep on trucking. So after what I thought was a giant fiasco, I decided to think critically about the day, decide what I could change for the next day, and then let it go. That was it. It is more torturous and less beneficial to replay the day over and over. Just let it go, learn from it, and be better for next time.

I'll end with a quote from Winston Churchhill.

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts."