TL;DR:

• Writing your own headlines can help transform negativity into a more positive light.
• Focus on the good. We know when we do that, the good just keeps getting better.

Write Your Own Headlines!

There’s a story floating around the Internet by Pastor Andy Stanley with the idea of writing your own headlines. Given the state of the world and any mainstream media we consume, it’s easy to think that the world around us is falling apart. Every system is failing, every person is out for themselves, and all other potential joy has been sucked up by yesteryear.

What I love about Andy Stanley’s story is, in short, an old man telling a young person who said 2020 must have been a hard year that it wasn’t so. It wasn’t so because he chose to write his own headlines. The story is easily searchable.

It reminded me of my first year of teaching in elementary school when I thought, how come no one knows of all the good that is going on in this school? No one sees the meal trains for the family in need. No one sees the projects that our kids and teachers are creating to help the community or the environment or their friends. And no one sees the staff coming together to celebrate babies and holidays and academic achievements. To me, it was all so much more newsworthy than what I’d see on TV.

If you were to write them, what would the headlines look like for your classroom and your life outside of school?

Here are a few of mine.

Sixth Grade Teacher Masters the New Classroom

I love teaching literature, and the discussions were so much more real when meeting kids in their own element. This past year, I got to meet the family dogs, see the kid-designed workspaces, and wave to grandma in the background making lunch. As much as we don’t want to go back to emergency remote teaching, it brought us closer to students in ways never before possible.

Teacher Creates Free K-12 Interactive PLC Community

Tired of trying to keep up with all of the digital resources available to us in the classroom? Yeah, I was too! A few amazing people joined forces with me to bring my doctoral research to life at educationblueprint.org. Here you can find, share, and rate resources that make for the best learning experiences.

It’s free and it’s awesome, and I hope it changes the way we teachers communicate and share our resources. Rather than recreating the wheel in every district across America, we can have one centralized place for all of the best tools to be shared.

Mom of 3 Hikes Sargent Mountain in Acadia National Park

We’ve all got our travel bucket lists, and this one was a biggie. With my four-month-old in a carrier on my chest, we set up the all-terrain path to one of the most beautiful mountaintop views of Maine’s rocky coast. It was hot, wet, and wild, but the hard work was rewarded with the limitless scenery at the top.

My headlines may not be as heartwarming as Pastor Andy’s, however. They are headlines of where I am at in my life as we speak. As you begin your year this fall, I challenge you to write your own headlines. Have your students do it, too. Make it a fancy bulletin board, or simply make it a conversation. Just focus on the good. We know when we do that, the good just keeps getting better. I can’t wait to see these truly newsworthy stories!

About Kelly Pascarella