at the moment I had my own dilemma: to speak or not to speak. So, I quietly decided, yes. I’ll face the happiness dilemma that was like a cancer to our team and department. I will face my own personal dilemma and say something. But what should I say? What would you say?
As we were walking, I asked him a simple yet complex question: “Why do you hide behind this wall of unhappiness? What happened to you?”
Silence. I repeated my question and waited. You could hear our footsteps crackling in the snow.
His eventual response was revealing in so many ways. Barry told me that it was just easier than dealing with the reality of what his students don’t know. Essentially, he had lost his desire to do battle. He could not slog through another season of students failing. It wasn’t just the teacher strike. Essentially, he no longer found meaning in his work, and for him it was just easier to blame his problems on the students, the administration, and sometimes his colleagues—like me.
I asked him if teaching was his passion. He wasn’t sure anymore. I asked him if he wanted to stop being so negative. He said no. So, I stopped talking for a while. Eventually, we returned to the house and talked long into the night. He didn’t bite my head off, but it was difficult at times, because he seemed so angry with me. I knew it wasn’t about me, but it was still hard to listen and not take it personally or not tell him I thought he was rude sometimes. We became what I would term cautious colleagues over the next few years.
I won’t get into more details, because it was a personal journey for Barry, but I will say he reconnected with owning his own emotional state, becoming more aware of his negative impact on others, and finding some love for his students once again. It took him time, but his heartprint gradually began to change. I don’t think he ever reconnected with his original passion for the work. He also thought my positive outlook was not acceptable given the teaching conditions that caused the strike.
In the end, I told him I thought he had those endearing and funny traits of the better teachers I have known. He had, however, just forgotten what it meant to join and commit to the teaching and learning profession. It was okay to search for his happiness in his work. It was okay to find joy in the journey. It was okay to connect to students and colleagues with grace and, as we will discover later, something called grit.
It was his choice after all. Just as it was my choice too.
Think about Seppälä’s definition of happiness again: “A state of heightened positive emotion.”9 In the space provided, write about some of the actions you take at school or home to maintain your positive emotional state with your students and colleagues, even on the toughest of days.
Do you have a happiness dilemma that needs to be resolved? Do you have a work relationship that is draining you? Are you avoiding that colleague or student? Do you need to make the choice to lean into and engage a colleague who needs a happiness checkup?
Name the colleague (keep it to yourself—you do not want to offend someone, even if you need to lean into him or her), and decide the action you are able to take after you read chapter 2. For additional support with this type of happiness dilemma, see also chapter 19 in part 3, “A is for Alliances.”
How do you and your colleagues generally exhibit a positive emotional commitment to your students, each other, and your work? Be descriptive with your response.
It is possible that you will be able to reconnect that person to his or her passion for the profession. This connection, in turn, may just be what this person needs to help him or her find elements of happiness in professional life once again.
The Happiness-Passion Connection
Passion makes the difference between something common and something special.
—Mark Sanborn
You are special. That might sound trite, but it is not. You chose this profession. That alone makes you special in my eyes and the eyes of the hundreds of students who pass through your life. And, according to Mark Sanborn, author of the New York Times bestseller The Fred Factor, your passion is part of what makes you special.10
I recovered from sometimes difficult school seasons mostly because of my deep passion for teaching and because of colleagues, students, and family members who took the time to reconnect me to my deep passion for the work.
That is an interesting phrase, right? Deep passion for the work.
What does it mean to have a passion for teaching? Passion is an impactful word and yet, it is tough to measure or define. As I was writing this chapter, I thought back to when I first knew.
It was revealed in one of those singular moments in time—when with great clarity while sitting in an eleventh-grade mathematics class at Addison Trail High School in Illinois, I just flat out knew I wanted to become a teacher—and maybe someday a fully formed educator. Teaching was what I was meant to do with my work life!
When did you know? Can you remember? Why did you choose education as your profession? Was it the influence of a parent, colleague, teacher, or child? Was it, like me, a singular moment of clarity while learning from my favorite teacher, Al Foster? How did you know teaching children was a choice you would fully embrace? How did you know it was your passion?
To tap into this idea of passion, I decided to ask hundreds of educators who have made the choice to join our ranks.
In the summer of 2016, during Solution Tree’s PLC institutes, I asked more than five hundred educators, just like you and me, to define what passion in the workplace means.
Here are the primary categories of responses I received.
Passion is…
Passion is what I feel.
Passion is what I love, and I love to teach.
Passion is to be fully energized in my work.
Passion is the emotion I bring to work every day.
Passion is what helps me to inspire my students.
Passion is what serves me when I get tired.
Passion is what sustains me in my moments of doubt.
Passion is my burning desire to help difficult children.
Passion is what motivates me to right the wrongs I see in my school.
Passion is just my style.
Merriam-Webster offers up a solid definition of passion: “a strong feeling of enthusiasm or excitement for something or about doing something.”11
