1. Focus on the positive.  You can be the crappiest teacher in the world (and of course you aren’t), and there is still something in your curriculum, your style, or your lesson worthy of praise.  Even from you.  Especially from you.

2. When something funny happens, laugh.  Teachers deal with people. And people are funny.  So funny things happen every day.  When you pull the movie screen cord and the screen crashes to the floor, or that student with zero filter makes an off-color comment, or the creaky board in the corner makes it sound like you’ve eaten too many breakfast burritos, you can huff and puff and turn red or you can laugh it off.  Teaching is funny.  Learn to laugh.

3. Teach Your Passion.  Whenever possible, find what you love about what you’re doing and put that front and center.  Your enthusiasm will be contagious.  Your students will be more engaged.  And you will have more fun.  And then you can watch that cycle replicate itself over and over.

4. Simplify, but be prepared.  If you have subtracted the unnecessary and the superfluous, then what’s  left should be sleek enough to shine*.  But that doesn’t mean you get to slack. Nothing is more peaceful or calming than knowing that everything is ready to rock.  The beauty part is that once you’ve got stuff streamlined, being a TPH (Total Prep Head) is much easier than if your mind (and classroom) is cluttered and junky.

5. Breathe. Nothing is perfect. 
When a lesson plan tanks, or your students are bouncing off the wall, or the paralysis of your “leadership” team has you ready to gnaw your fingers off, stop what you’re doing, sit down, and breathe through the bumps.  Step back and remind yourself that everything–the good and the bad–is temporary and that some kind of change, maybe even a good one, is right around the corner.  TZT   

*I’m not sure if this post shines, exactly, but the first draft was 394 words and in subsequent drafts I was able to subtract over 60 words by eliminating the superfluous and the unnecessary.