ABSTRACT
Your child was up all night with an ear infection; you spilled your coffee on the way to school; the copy machine ran out of toner when you were scrambling to finish your copies for the day. There are a million things that could ruin your day, and sometimes the world seems to be conspiring against you – sapping all your energy and all your joy. There is a picture in my office of Michael Jordan jumping from the free-throw line to dunk a basketball. I added a caption to the picture that reads: “What are YOU rising above?” We cannot always control our circumstances, but we can always control our response to those circumstances. Are you a victim of your circumstances or do you choose to rise above them? And our attitude does not just affect our own emotional well-being, it affects everyone around us. Our attitude is felt at the lunch table, in the hallway, in the workroom, in the faculty meeting, and certainly in our classroom. Good days do not just happen to us; we decide to have good days.
