As an empath the two words of the title make me cringe.  People are scary.  You never know what they are going through, what is happening or has happened to them and their emotions can be overwhelming.  Weird, you may say, for someone who teaches high school to be an empath.  I won’t say weird, just…difficult, daily.

I have been lucky enough with my schooling at Sacred Mists to learn how to effectively shield (when I remember) and even when I don’t, how to off the emotions quickly with walks outside, and grounding.  These have become especially important as the children of today change with society.  The families they come from look different from the kids I dealt with 19 years ago.  The world is changing, and it affects everyone.

As a teacher and an empath I also have a natural affinity for saving.  I would bring every last one of those kids home with me to love and nurture if I could, but I can’t.  What I can do is create an atmosphere in my classroom that gives them that.  Yes I teach them how to write an essay and be an active reader with their short stories and non-fiction articles.  Yes I teach them how to think outside the box and introduce them to important quotes that have meaning in today’s world as much as when they were said in 1902.  I also teach them that there are safe places to express ideas not everyone agrees with.  I teach them that respect in a classroom means allowing others to have different ideas and to not put them down.  We work on behaving like civilized human beings and not the apes in the zoo, we learn that not everything must be turned into a joke or a racial issue.

These are things that I didn’t have to do just a few years ago, but now, today, tomorrow it is where all my energy is going.  I have always been able to establish relationships with my students.  That is not a hard thing for me to do.  However, I have never had to create them.  This term, I am having to create them.  I am learning new things, and how to look at situations and people from different angles as I work hard at creating relationships with kids I have nothing in common with.  We are finding common ground and learning that we can live and like each other.  I write this 2 days into a brand new term with brand new students.  It feels like summer should be tomorrow.  I am off today for a family reason (see next post) and in two days it felt like I needed it.

Tomorrow, I will be back with new energy and working just as hard to keep creating those relationships.  I will also have the diffuser going, the crystals out working overtime and I will be wearing jade. I have all the standard stones on my desk already (amethyst, quartz (in all colors and shades) labrodite, emerald, ruby, kyonite, selonite…you know the ones everyone knows and uses.  The kids love those.  However, I am wearing jade for its encouragement of seeing oneself as you truly are and dispelling of negative thoughts.  For me, when I am creating these relationships, I need to be me.  These kids need to know that someone genuinely wants to know them, help them and move them forward.  Jade allows me to be protected and still be me.

Do you find you have to create relationships or do they come naturally to you?  Are you a fixer like I am or are you able to just look past and move forward?  Do you have any tips, tricks or guidance for me? Cause I’m taking all the help I can get!

Blessed Be!