Yesterday I sat down and developed a positive affirmation that would help me become more congruent with my values in teaching. Covey states that "a good affirmation has five basic ingredients: it's personal, it's positive, it's present tense, it's visual, and it's emotional." My positive affirmation for teaching is very similar to the one he developed: "It is deeply satisfying (emotional) that I (personal) respond (present tense) with wisdom, compassion, firmness, and self-control (positive) when my students misbehave."

Over the next few weeks, I will be taking this affirmation and visualizing it. You can do the same. Spend a few minutes each day and totally relax your mind and body. Think about those situations in which your students might misbehave. Visualize them in rich detail. Feel the floor under your feet. Hear the sounds of the classroom. See the expression on your student's face. The more clearly and vividly you can imagine the detail, the more deeply you will experience it, the less you will see it as a spectator.

Next, visualize your student do something very specific which normally upsets you. But instead of thinking of your normal response, see yourself handling the situation with all the compassion, the power, the self-control you have captured in your affirmation. You can write the program, write the script, in harmony with your values.

If you do this, day by day your behavior will change. Instead of living out the scripts given to you by your own parents or by society or genetics or your environment, you will be living out the script you have written from your own self-selected value system.

Now go write your own affirmation and try using these ideas in your classroom.