The last two weeks have been hectic for us as we’ve been running our daughter to swim practice in a neighboring town.  It’s about a 30 minute drive and then a two hour practice, so hardly enough time to run home, so I’ve been riding my bike on the “new” trail.  It’s a pretty awesome ride, about 12 miles with half of it fairly flat and the other half riding out of river valley into a rolling prairie, thus lots of good thigh busting hills!

Anyway, if I’m riding by myself, I’m riding to work out and have the music playing.  The last two time I’d been listening to Techlandia and Edu-All Stars, two awesome educational podcasts, but in my haste to get out the door yesterday, I didn’t get any downloaded.  So, I had some music I played, but then found I had an old Tiesto podcast.  For those of you who don’t know (probably everyone) Tiesto is a very good European DJ who has  free podcast called “Tiesto’s Club Life”, an hour of rolling dance music, house music, and remix songs.  A very little known fact about me, I LOVE this kind of music.  A general bass line that moves from song to song, love it!

So this is an older podcast I’d not listened to, and in it’s own rights, it was a great podcast! However, so many of the dance anthems just rocked on this group of songs and at a spot on the trail where that boost was needed.  It was just amazing how each time I rode through a gorgeous group of prairie flowers or hit a good hit, the music cranked up another level, making everything around me just glow with this intense, almost visible energy.  If this is what a “runner’s high” is all about, sign me up because it was not anything that I’d ever experienced before.

As I pulled off to my van to load back up and find where she was, that experience got me thinking about my students and our school in general.  How can I be that energy for my kids?  I’m “on” from the get go, but yet, there are those days where they are reaching the base of that hill, and I need to amp it up!  What kinds of things could I be doing to help those kids find that rhythm that makes them more intense about their school.  Same way with my school.  Because of all the changes and issues we’ve had, staff moral is low, and moving to single sections most classrooms now have at least 25 in them, a huge change here.  How can I help my partners in teaching not get down on themselves or their students?  How can I help them stay as positive as possible in the face of overwhelming pressure from all over?

Well, it goes back to Teach Like a Pirate and the “purple cow” moments.  I’ll be honest, I’m not a purple cow.  I’m about a brown a cow as you can imagine, but I need to step it up both for my students, and for my teacher friends.  How can I bring some purple cows here? I’ve got a couple of ideas, but more importantly, I’m thinking about all of them.  I want my students to be successful, but I need those teachers to be successful as well.  I want the adults to feel that burden isn’t all for them to carry and I want them to feel that energy that happens when it’s all coming together: the bass is thumping, the weather is perfect, and your legs could pedal you for days.

Well let it ride and see what happens.  The best part of all these ideas, if they don’t work, at least I gotten people to smile, and some days, that’s half the battle! 🙂