As a motivational speaker for teachers and educators I love my job. I love all of my clients. But occasionally I have a job that is especially fun for an especially cool school district. Such was the case when I recently visited Johnson City, Texas.

They got all of their educators together —classified and unclassified… Teachers, administrators, nutrition, transportation, facilities,… Everybody! — and asked me to come to help get them ready for the new school year. I’ve done this a bunch. Working as a motivational speaker for educators I’ve done many many in services. But this year is different, isn’t it? This year we are coming out of one pandemic, (and concerned about entering a delta variant-based pandemic.)

My experience in working with teachers and educators is that at this time of year they’re all exhausted and overwhelmed. They can’t believe the summer is over. They’re not sure they have enough gas back in that tank to go for another year. They love their jobs but their jobs are also exhausting.

This year, because of Covid, all of their difficulties are amplified. Last year was exceptionally difficult for educators of all types. School districts across the country had to constantly adjust, pivot, change, and continue doing more without an increase in pay.

I worked with the Johnson City Texas staff in the cafetorium. I love those rooms.

I knew right off the bat that it was going to be a fun job. This group was easy to laugh, 

and they seemed primed for somebody like me to come in with some ideas about how to restock there sometimes limited resilience.

I chose to approach this audience with a mixture of tons of humor and entertainment. Humor was important partly because these people are exhausted and really needed to laugh. But also I found that humor helps people to engage and listen to my big ideas.

 In this case my big idea was to talk about harnessing social and emotional support to get more out of ourselves, to build our own sense of value and self-worth, to increase our personal resilience, job satisfaction, and measurable happiness.

One of the many things I like about this social and emotional support message for educators and teachers is that it helps build the educators as individuals. But the undeniable and really cool side effect is that

 when educators increase their social and emotional support it up serve the school, the school district, and definitely trickles down to creating epic education for those students.

It was a really fun job. I loved the teachers. I loved the classified staff. I loved the town of Johnson City Texas. They could not have made me feel more welcome.

The only thing that could’ve made this job better was good old-fashioned Texas style barbecue.  Boom! They had a local barbecue joint cater in lunch and I had some absolutely delicious brisket.

Thank you Johnson City! You’ve got this. This year is undoubtedly going to be difficult. But you’re ready. You can do it. Just don’t forget to take care of yourself first… Because if you burn out the entire house of cards falls apart.

Thanks for having me!  What a fun job!