A note on this week's audioblog -
I hardly ever listen to these tracks (even as I'm editing it and adding music) because I think it's just better for everyone if I not hear the sound of my own voice. But I deigned a listen to this week's post and realized - with much horror and not a few tears - that I'd accidentally uploaded the raw, unedited version this week instead of the nice one I'd spent hours editing. I'd also JUST cleaned up my project folder, so the finished product I meant to upload was permanently erased. Like, for good good. After spilling some tears on James' shoulder, I decided to keep this up here anyway. Part of being a good student is learning to live with mistakes. That being said, apologies for the amateur, fuzzy, non-soundtracked track this week. Back with a better one next week!
Anyone who's been reading this blog for any length of time knows I've been a teacher for many years. But this is the first August that I'm not excitedly, anxiously, joyfully setting up a fresh, new teacher planner. I haven't spent my summer researching and revamping science units. I haven't placed any orders for pencils or pipettes, and there's nothing you or my therapist can say that won't make me feel a certain cloud of guilt for not joining all of you in your busy preparations.
It's felt strange these past few weeks to walk by a back-to-school display at Target and not feel the need to fight fellow teachers for that last box of Twistable colored pencils. Suffice it to say that all you dear educator friends have been fiercely on my mind since the waning of summer.
This year, we're peering cautiously around corners and holding our breath, hopeful that this might be the first year (*knock on wood*) that we can have a regular year. The pandemic is far from done, but we're hoping to put quarantines and Zoom classrooms into that dusty corner where we shove all things remembered but preferably forgotten. Anyone working in schools during these past two years has worked with the heart of a lion and the ferocity of a firefighter.
Before I say anything else, I want you to know - you are heroes for doing the work that no one else wanted to do. For continuing the work that retired or resting teachers like me couldn't.
And now, here we are, at the cusp of a new year. Some of you early birds are already driving to school, eager to get your rooms ready before everything else hits the fan.
Others of you are - understandably - dragging your feet and relishing your twilight moments of freedom and alarm-clocklessness. Either way, I imagine you're eyeing that circled date on your calendar and it's likely all you think about these days.
So here's a list of five back-to-school reminders that I've used in the past to best ready my heart for a fresh cycle of teaching, learning, and growing. I'm sharing these with you in hopes you'll find something here that might help you recenter your teacher compass as you step bravely into this new year -
(1) Prepare
(2) Purposefulness over perfection
(3) Practice self-care
(4) Play
(5) Purpose
(1) Prepare
When my husband was still a classroom teacher, he'd often stay at school late into the evening. There's always a lot to do to wrap up a day's work with kids, but that's not why he tarried his departure.
It was to get ready for the next day. Sharpening pencils, preparing schedules, and setting up for tomorrow. He wouldn't let himself leave the room until his space was ready to go for the next day. It wasn't long before I adopted his routines. When colleagues later asked me why I hadn't left with my students at three, my usual answer was, "Because I'm being kind to my tomorrow self!"
Life happens. The car doesn't start, the alarm doesn't go off, what have you. And one of the worst things to feel as a teacher at the start of the day is frazzled. You know that feeling when you rush through the door with short breaths and can't think straight. It's a terribly unpleasant feeling. Far worse, that's when careless words are spoken. Important things get miscommunicated. And that unwitting haphazardness means more time spent undoing what you did when you were frazzled.
It's a sucky feeling, but the happy news is that it's avoidable. This year, consider taking a few moments at the end of the day to set things up so you can preserve yourself from a morning rush of tasks. Why? For a few reasons.
1) It saves you time.
2) It takes less time as you continue to do them.
3) It allows you to receive and be present with students.
I had a little circuit that I'd run through my classroom before leaving school. I'd start at the whiteboard to write the next day's schedule. Then I'd go to the word wall and put up the words we learned that day. Then to the supplies area to either clean up from the day or prepare tomorrow's experiments. Finally, I'd sit at my desk to sort my inbox, either responding to urgent ones or reserving some for tomorrow. I'd move through those motions every single teaching day, and it would take anywhere from an hour to three. But I'd do them all so that when I came in the next day - whether I was on time or running late - I was ready to greet colleagues and students with a smile.
Over the years, that routine has gotten faster - to the point where I no longer need to even think about it. A friend can come in and chat with me while I'm doing it all, because I don't have to expend much of my brain to attend to what I'm doing. So would you consider being kind to your tomorrow self and come up with a before-you-leave routine? I'd love for you to walk in fresh each morning, ready to tackle whatever the day holds.
(2) Purposefulness over perfection
I once knew a teacher - we'll call her Nancy - who was a manic for details. I say 'manic' quite intentionally because she'd spend far too long poring over classroom charts, making sure every drawing, color coding, and underline was POIfect. I once saw her angrily tear up an almost-complete poster from the easel and start from scratch just because she'd accidentally used the wrong marker color for a single word.
All right, all right. I admit it. That was, in fact, me.
I'm not certain about the why, but I find that teachers are often harder on themselves than those in any other trade or profession. I hope to God that there's no one out there as comically extreme as I, but it was never hard to find colleagues whose minds lingered grievously on failures - real or imagined.
I wonder if teachers are harder on themselves because they know the work they're doing affects the very future. It's important to be cognizant of that, of course. No one who conducts meaningful work should do it lightly. But all too often, healthy gravitas veers in the opposite direction and we work something to death, Nancy/Jane-style. I'm reminded of a chronic nose-picker in my class who had to be frequently warned - "If you do that too often, you'll get a bloody nose."
Overworked noses can get bloody.
Over-picked details get banal.
Over-perfectionistic teachers become bleary and blurry-eyed.
So - as you're being kind to your tomorrow self with routines, consider being kind to your today self as you go about your work. Pursue all the purposeful decisions with care and precision - things dealing with curriculum, maximizing student engagement, and organizing flow so that barriers to learning are removed.
But let the small things go - not only for your own sake, but for the sake of children who are always watching and learning how to go about their work from you.
(3) Practice self-care
You know what I hate? Speeding tickets. It sours my day to receive one, and it feels like such a hard hit to part with my money, even if I know I was driving way above the speed limit.
I used to treat my tiredness like a speeding ticket. Didn't my body know I had things to do and people to see (or, as I once mistakenly blurted because of said exhaustion - 'People to do and things to see?') I despised the thought of pulling over for a seat when there was so much work to do. So when my feet grew sore or my back complained, I did what I'd love to do with all speeding tickets - ignore them. Caffeine was my best friend and the sheer adrenaline of a breakneck schedule kept me going day in and day out until the weekend or a vacation.
I hate speeding tickets as much as I hate the feeling of tiredness. But you know what I hate more than speeding tickets?
Accidents.
Our bodies function best on a balance of rest and work, and the more we ignore the symptoms of chronic tiredness, accidents happen. Things start breaking down more easily in our bodies and we need to take time away from our classrooms to tend to the physical and emotional brokenness that could have been avoided if we had listened to our internal warning system.
When I was once driving like a madman to make it to a hospital appointment, the kindly officer let me off with a warning and reminded me, "It's important to get there on time. But I'd rather you get there alive." I thought of that last year when I started getting regular infections, heart palpitations, and doctor warnings.
Teachers' work is important. The emails, the meetings, the rigmarole - they all eventually contribute to your students' well-being. But if that's the goal, I'd rather you get there alive. Practice self-care, friends. Save a spot in your schedules if you need to, so that you remember to play with your pets, feel the grass between your toes, and enjoy the occasional but truly junky food and the sugar highs they bring (unless you're a diabetic. Please don't do that if you're a diabetic).
Play
My friend Natalie is an absolute rockstar in the classroom. If you were to meet her through her curriculum vitae, you might be tempted to regard her the way most adults do - by being impressed, intimidated, or both. Natalie is an Ivy League graduate, a published author, and knows more about curriculum and pedagogy than anyone other educator I've ever met. She speaks and writes at a college level in both English and Portuguese, and - most wondrously of all - she is always learning and growing. With all she does throughout the day, she still finds time to read more books than I could ever dream of doing on my best days.
But that's not why I admire her most. And it's certainly not why students love her so much.
Natalie plays. She plays hard. At our former school, her role as a Design Thinking Director technically granted her a leadership ledge, but she was most often on the floor with children, patiently helping them think through how to build a better chair for their beloved stuffies. If a student were to come crying because they couldn't build a sturdy paper cone for a fairy castle, Natalie wouldn't do the adult thing. You'd never hear her saying, 'Buck up, because it's just pretend.'
Instead, she would wonder about how the paper might have to be folded to keep the princess from falling. She'd ask about whether the castle would need forms of protection from dangerous dragons. She'd ask about how he or she planned to decorate the castle. And when the castle was triumphantly complete, she would celebrate louder than the child because she never saw this project as an adult would; she respected, invested, and built and played like they did.
It's easy to get caught in the trappings of adult life, especially as an educator. Running a school or a classroom is complex work, and it takes some dextrous adult mindsets - responsibility, maturity, relational wisdom - to carry out those myriad tasks well. But when you're on the ground with children (of any age! Yes, high school seniors are children too.), you need to be ready to play hard. Maya Angelou is frequently remembered for reminding us, "People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." I'd like to add to her sagacity by saying children especially remember best.
Over the years, I've held tight to bell hooks' idea that "[in] a classroom community, our capacity to generate excitement is deeply affected by our interest in one another, in hearing one another's voices, in recognizing one another's presence." The greatest tragedy I find is when teachers are so burnt out from meetings, schedules, curriculum changes, and parental pressures that they can't be joyfully, respectfully, child-like-ly there with their students. Students who see an adult who's too short-tempered to hear their sorrows, too busy to believe their burdens, and too adult to appreciate their aspirations and ambitions will hardly trust this adult is truly for them.
So for their sake, play along. Play because those stolen moments are planting seeds of trust with your students. Play convincingly and play as a child. In the end, I think you'll not only find it well worth your while, but you'll enjoy your time far better with them than if you were at your teacher table doing other things.
And on that note -
Purpose
My last days as a teacher were hard. I sometimes use the word 'traumatizing,' not so much because someone was actively committing trauma every day, but because the slow and steady collections of micro-aggressions and regular flouting of a moral code built up to prompt seemingly disproportionate responses. I cried so many tears in so many places - the school parking lot, classroom closet, stairwells, and at home.
But as the clock approached the moment kids would be coming into my space, I'd recite this aloud, almost as a mantra - It's for the kids. I'm here for the kids. It's all for them. And then, with that purpose firmly reset in mind, I'd take a breath, open my door wide, and feel ready to receive my first class.
Classroom comrades, I hope - more than anything - that none of you will experience a year like the one I had. If I had birthday candles waiting to be blown out right now, I would use them to wish for an endless string of happy, seamless string of teaching days for all of you. But if you're an experienced teacher, you've already dismissed that last sentence because you know that would never happen. You'll feel the tiredness on many-a-day, exhaustion that you carry in your soul and in your bones. And you may shed a tear or two or a thousand, because no one - no child, parent, or even an empathetic principal - could possibly understand how hard this work is.
...except another teacher. Probably because their own crying closet shares a wall with yours.
Meaningful work is often hard. And that's why it's all the more important to recall the 'why' behind it. The minutiae and the moment-by-moment struggles are so damn good at masking your main purpose in this role.
So say it to yourself. Stick a post-it on the mirror. Repeat it to yourself when the piles on your desk get higher, the inbox gets stuffed to the gills, and some setback's come along to try and kick you where it hurts.
It's for the kids. You're here for the kids. It's all for them.
Experienced educators - What tips or reminders do you have about how to start the year off successfully?
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