Energy Bus!!!

I read some more of The Energy Bus tonight and got one more idea for my classroom!  George's coworkers told him that he had never really done anything for them, so why should they choose to ride his bus?  All of a sudden, he turned from a continuously negative person, to one who wanted everyone to be positive with him.  When the book started to talk about how building positivity takes a lot of energy, every single day, similar to building muscle, I got an idea!


I thought that was a very intriguing point.  If you start exercising, but then stop for a week, when you come back the next week, it is never as easy to pick up!  Similarly, if you lose your positive energy, it makes it more difficult to pick back up.  It is easy to get the "poor me" attitude and hope that things will turn up, but you are the driver of your own bus!  


I think this can hold true in the classroom.  If you think your class has had a bad week, your students may go home feeling negative and not being excited to come back the next day.  While not everything can always turn out the way you had hoped, looking at it in a constructive manner can help it to improve for the next time.


My idea for the classroom is to end each day with three positive things that happened that day.  I will use a class list to make sure that everyone gets a turn each round to share a "positive."  I am hopeful that this will also help us to realize that we are all riding the same bus!