Have I mentioned how much I love spring?  January and February are busy months for work, so I’m excited when March arrives and I can spend time in our yard – which I did yesterday.  And I’m happy to report that after 12 hours of scrubbing and power washing, our hardscapes are clean.

Power washing is a very cathartic activity.  Have you ever tried it?  It’s amazing.  Just point and shoot, and “poof” – all the grime is washed away.  There is something empowering about having all that control in one trigger finger. 

It’s a shame I can’t power wash all the craziness out of my life that easily.  Unfortunately, my hippocampus won’t let me.  It’s an area of the brain that collect memories.  Future behaviors are impacted by past ones.  And depending on our perspective, this can work for or against us.

Educators who are having a relatively good year are likely to head into school each day optimistically looking for positive outcomes.  However, if it has been a challenging year, we might have more of a cloudy outlook expecting, anticipating and inadvertently triggering poor behaviors in our students.

We can’t erase the past, but to the best of our abilities we should try to give our students clean slates at school each day.  Just as I worked to clean the grime and residue off the concrete, so too, do we need to rid ourselves of the negative expectations for our students we’ve built up throughout the year. 

Power washing is a great activity.  And it’s one I really should do more often.  I just need to make certain I’m applying this ritual to more areas of my life than just my patio.