"Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)"

The title is a quote from Walt Whitman's, "Song of Myself."

When I woke up this morning, I was tired. When I began to eat breakfast, I was content. When I straightened my tie and looked in the mirror, I smiled. As I drove to work, I was relaxed. When I signed into work, I felt nothing. When I got to my classroom, I just wanted to drink my tea. When the bell rang, I got anxious. When the students came in, I got excited. When they left, I was relieved. By the time the day ended, I was relieved, happy, and tired. Right now, I am exhausted.

At this point, my life is an emotional roller coaster. My mood shifts as I attempt to battle the raw emotions that may overcome me with understanding and a process of self reflection that has been instilled in me by my parents, mentors, friends, and just plain old life experience. Yes, I get angry. I get mad. I get confused. I get annoyed. I get ticked off. I get all of that and more. It is almost impossible not to.

If my students and I are going to have a successful year, then I have to keep an optimistic attitude. Does this mean that I cannot get mad, angry, or frustrated? No, it does not. Rather, it means that I need to productively channel those feelings in order to pursue our goals even more relentlessly.

While this may seem incredibly challenging (and it is), it is not completely uphill. For between those moments of anger and after those cries of frustration, there is excitement—there are epiphanies, “Aha!” moments, and the smile of a student in the hallway as you start to build those relationships with them. There is joy.

I say all of this because today was full of happiness and frustration. I had to pull a kid out of my class and talk to her after almost getting into a fight in my classroom. One kid openly defied me when he did not want to give me his cell phone, so I had to send him to the infractions room. A kid even passed gas during class. That started an uproar, of course. One student came late after being in the assistant principal office—he had been wandering the hallway because he did not want to come to my class.

On the other hand, once that student came in, he was very helpful. He even helped other students understand some of the material. Though two students were in detention, I had the opportunity to get to know them better and continue to build a relationship with them. When asking my students about their goals, they all talked about graduating from high school and going onto college. Music to my ears.

This was all great. It is my job to help them get there. I had to stop and take long breaths multiple times today, but I also got a chance to stop and think about what my students deserved in life. I am exhausted right now. I really do not feel like doing any work. Yet, my strength is renewed by my sense of purpose. My fatigue is countered by a sense of urgency. My frustration is met with the realization that I am going to make mistakes, but I just need to make sure I learn from them—in a word, humility. I can do better.

"And these tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them,
And such as it is to be of these more or less I am,
And of these one and all I weave the song of myself."

-Whitman, "Song of Myself"