Is the antidote to toxic positivity negativity?

In which I suspend the negative and ask for stories of success!

I’ll answer my own question right up-front: No. The antidote to toxic positivity is not negativity. But I think negativity can play a role in balancing out a teacher’s experience and a school’s culture.

Why? Because toxic positivity is denial. It’s willfully going blind on a huge part of every teacher’s daily experience. Teachers experience negative emotions not because they’re failures or bad at their jobs. But because their jobs are extremely difficult. Because students and parents and colleagues and administrators are unpredictable and uncontrollable and therefore likely to frustrate and anger and disappoint. Totally normal. Totally natural.

Toxic positivity pretends this natural part of teaching (and living) doesn’t or shouldn’t exist. OH MY GOD. It’s like grown-ass adults believe in genies. If you think or say anything bad you’re rubbing a genie lamp. Out will come a terrible monster! It will gobble up the good and fill the world with darkness and despair!

As you know by now, Teaching through Emotions is all about embracing the negative. Because I know that negative emotions, while they might not feel great, carry a helluva lot of accurate information about a teacher’s internal state, their self-defeating beliefs and behavioral patterns, and the state of their relationships with students. All of which has a direct impact on teachers’ teaching and students’ learning.

Using negative emotions to access all this and make things right is what TTE and Teacher Support Groups do. And it works. Which is why I’m constantly encouraging teachers to bring out their rottenest feelings and plop them on the table. So we can do alchemy on them. And provide welcome relief.

But I get it: Teachers are reluctant to share the negative. They do have negative feelings, of that I’m certain. But they’d rather share their successes, their positive experiences, their good work.

I’m guessing you, dear reader, would rather share your successes, too.

So let’s call a moratorium on negativity! As of this moment, TTE suspends its focus on the negative and invites all teachers to share the positive!

For a week.

Please, share your successes in the comments

or on the TTE hotline.

413.239.4158.

I would love to hear them and trumpet them! Let’s celebrate the miracle of teaching!!

Tell us about how you turned around a disruptive student. Or managed a chaotic classroom. Or got back in your effin’ Garden and experienced the salutary effects of respectful boundaries. Anything!

Right about now we all need to share and hear some good news.