Cue The Rocky Music!

There are times when nothing serves you better than a healthy dose of confidence. When mentoring new teachers I used to tell them, "You have to own that classroom before any student walks in." I had a ritual that I used to go through at the beginning of every semester to accomplish this for myself.

I would go into my classroom the day before classes began, preferably, I would like it to be late afternoon or evening, when nearly everyone else was out of the building and I would walk around the room. I would look at everything I decorated. I would check to see how the desks were arranged. And then the internal monologue would begin (I was never nuts enough to say it aloud), "This is MY room. We are going to learn here, discuss here, and build a class community here. I am the authority." Behind these words I would hear the Rocky music, you know, "Gonna Fly Now" just to make sure I was completely amp-ed up.



I would end it off with something like, "This is going to be an awesome year," and then I would smile, lock up the room and go home to re-read sections from my book First Days of School by Harry Wong.

In the beginning, it was completely forced. I have never been a terribly confident person, but that is unacceptable when you are standing in front of 34 adolescents. So I faked it this way, for years, until I embodied it.


I think this is an important thing to do, even if it is just for yourself. Sometimes you need convincing that you belong in the arena, and when you do, if The Rocky theme doesn't work for you, then you simply must embrace the words of one of my greatest heroes of all time, Theodore Roosevelt. This excerpt from a speech he gave in 1910, is often called The Man in The Arena:

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

This builds confidence in the sheer act of doing. You read these words and you want to dare greatly! You want to spend yourself with a worthy cause. Most of all, though, you do not want to be a cold and timid soul, because you can feel the adventure, the life and the power that belongs to that man in the arena!

Do you have any techniques you use to "amp" yourself up?

What quote or song moves you to action?