Avi tells the story of when he was a first year teacher and was facing, well, first year teacher challenges.

He would come home at the end of the day and tell his spouse about the issues (This parent is driving him crazy; this student is unmanageable...). These stories did nothing good to the tone of dinner-time nor the evening, and, quite frankly, did not help process the issues from a positive perspective. Avi would then do some more preparation for the next day, but it was not very enthusiastic and felt like he was trying to pull energy out of his toes.

One evening he came home with a funny story about something that happened in class, and noticed that the whole tone of the evening was changed to a lighter atmosphere. Not only were both he and his spouse "happier" as they moved forward with dinner and the evening, but in his planning later on he noticed that he was able to view classroom issues with a more creative mindset. He began to bring home the stories about the funny things that happened in class, or the things that went well, or the things that he was grateful for? He found that the positive energy generated by these stories helped him see things from a more generous perspective, which allowed him to come up with gentle approaches to difficult situations.

There were many other benefits as well. One that I loved was that Avi started to look for different things in his work day to bring home as stories. He started to look for the things that were going well, for the funny things, for things we was grateful for. In looking for positive or funny fodder for his stories, it changed his tone with the students. It changed the tone of the classroom.

I remember Novi challenging him about this. Novi felt that you could not ignore negative issues, and had to tackle them head on. For example, you could not ignore an unruly classroom, you had to focus on Classroom Management. I loved Avi's answer to this one. He said: "Let's say I want to get the classes attention for something and they are kind of excited about it. There are always a few students who are harder to reach to get their attention. Instead of getting annoyed and calling them out on it, and therefore having the whole class suffer my wrath at the students who are not paying attention, I could focus on the students who are doing as I asked. In my Grade 2/3 class it sounded like: 'Thank you, Frank.' 'I appreciate you stopping what you are doing so quickly, Francine.' The students all pipe down and focus a lot faster than if I make it a discipline issue."

By the way, you know how Novi responded? He said: "I don't remember a Frank or Francine from that class!" So literal. Never mind.

The important thing here is that when Avi started to look for the funny things or what was working well or the great conversations, he smiled more, the people around him smiled more, the students smiled more. Also, it seemed that, because he was focused more on relationships, classroom management was easier.

I love that story, because it proves the power of Feeding the Good Fire. By focussing on what went well or felt good, Avi was focussing on what he wanted more of rather than what he wanted less of. This reminds me of another quick story. I will be quick. Honest.

When Novi, Avi and I were learning to drive in winter in Winnipeg, we were taught that the car WILL lose control at some point and head somewhere that we didn't want to go.... like one of those gargantuan snowbanks we had everywhere. We were taught that it did no good to look at the snowbank that was coming toward us, but better to look to where we wanted the car to go. This made sense, but I couldn't do it. I would close my eyes and scream. Novi couldn't do it. He would glare at the snowbank and roar as if he were charging it in battle. (Which made me laugh for some reason, and then made Novi roar louder...). The idea was to focus on where you wanted to go and let the body and subconscious deal with it. It worked (when Avi did it).

This is sort of the same thing for us in education. It is not about pretending the issue is not there (as I do), nor focussing on nothing but the issue (as Novi does), but of focussing on where we want to go and feeding that fire.

There were so many benefits of focusing on the positive things in the day from Avi's story. Remember a few of them?

• Their evenings were more fun and pleasant than when he came home and complained;

• Avi was energized and more creative in his planning;

• During the work day, Avi started to seek out “the stories” he would tell Sandra… which changed the tone of the classroom. He smiled more. Students smiled more. Classroom management was easier, as he was focused more on relationships than reprimanding unwanted behaviours. The list goes on.

This set of quests is about FEEDING THE GOOD FIRE

By the way, Novi challenged me about any research on the power of gratitude. Whatever. Here are a couple of sources for anybody who wishes to delve more deeply. I added these as a possible quest for you below.

• A short summary of the effects of gratitude meditation on neural network functional connectivity and brain-heart coupling. (Kyeong, S., Kim, J., Kim, D. et al. (2017). Effects of gratitude meditation on neural network functional connectivity and brain-heart coupling. Scientific Reports, 7, 5058.)

• TED TALKS I liked on Gratitude:

  • • David Steindl Rast

    • Christina Costa