There Are Things You Cannot Control In Education, So Stop Worrying About Them.
As a new teacher, you have naïve expectations about what your classroom would look like, how your students would behave, how you would teach, and how things would work for you. I’m sorry to be a party pooper, but you are wrong, and you will fail. On top of that, if you don’t adapt your mind and teaching, you will fail again.
Whoever is not or was not a teacher by vocation will never understand the fear and anxiety of facing twenty-five adolescents staring in your face, judging every move of yours, testing your integrity, emotional stamina, and knowledge. I’ve been there, and I failed, and I know now that there were many reasons to that failure, but the biggest one was – I assumed I could control everything in education, in my classroom, and I was wrong.
This is my third year of teaching, so I can proudly say I survived. If you are like me, then we are in the same boat. But if this is your first year, brace yourself. You will doubt not only yourself, your abilities, your readiness to handle things, but you will want to quit. Once year one is over, you are welcomed to the club of “We survived the first year of teaching.” It’s a much better place, I assure you.
So what about responsibility?
Being a teacher is like standing in front of the beehive and trying to control every bee in and out. That’s insane. However, you must start to realize your goal standing there in front of the beehive is not to get stung and keep your cool.
When you are in education, surprisingly, many things are out of your control. You might not have a curriculum, you might not have a smart board or windows in your classroom. You might not have enough chairs for all the kids in your classroom. You might not have a textbook. You might not know at first how to write learning and language objectives, agendas for each lesson. You might not control an administrator popping up in your classroom the moment the hell broke loose although just a moment earlier everything was so perfect. You cannot control your evaluation. You might not have all your students’ trust and respect at the beginning. You cannot control what background stories your students come with. You can’t control many things.
What you can control is you and how you react to the things around. It’s much harder than you might think, and it’s definitely a time-consuming journey. Investing in yourself, your professional and spiritual growth is your goal. There are five things I would like to share that helped me transform from a miserable to a much happier teacher.
1. Identify your priorities in school.
Many things will be thrown at you once you start teaching. You might want to start doing it all or assume that doing everything is what your responsibilities are. That’s wrong. Doing everything will yield no or inferior results. Always remember: less is more. Identify two-three areas you want to focus on and master in your first or second year of teaching. It can be classroom management, differentiation, assessment, group work, makers space, project-based learning. Just choose two or maximum three. Put most of your energy in learning about, studying, experimenting with, implementing best practices in the areas of your interest. You might fail at first, but don’t stop until you feel you got it. Connect to teachers in your school who seem to have mastered the areas of your interest. Model them. Find resources online to educate yourself about your areas of interest. Persevere.
2. Identify your priorities at home.
Decide what your home and being at home feel like and look like. Do you bring bags of grading home? Are you planning on Sunday night? Are you anxious about the things before the week starts? That’s a big mistake. But I’ve been there, too. I feel your pain. Have an honest conversation with yourself and tell yourself that you can no longer jeopardize your family time and your personal time to doing work. It is not beneficial for you, healthy or sustainable. Your time at home should be dedicated to your family and your interests; therefore, it is of utmost importance that you establish systems and routines that allow you to complete your school work at school and leave weekends for relaxation and rest.
3. Set strict boundaries.
Since we already talked about the importance of working at work and relaxing at home, let’s talk about the boundaries or instead blocks of time you need to establish to do your school work at work. Identify on what day or days you do unit planning, you formulate goals for each lesson, you look for resources, you make copies, you check tests and quizzes, you deal with parents and phones calls, and so on. Make these blocks unnegotiable.
Avoid wasting time on a coffee chat in the morning or listening to a complaining colleague. If you think your classroom is accessible to other people and thus interruption, leave the classroom and find the place you can work uninterrupted. By all means, cut checking social media out and other time wasters. Set timers for the tasks to be completed. If you look for resources on TpT, set the timer for ten minutes, for example, within which you need to make choices about what resources to get. Do the same for other tasks. This way you will stay focused on the completion of the task, have a tangible result at the end and be more productive.
While promoting some points that are unnegotiable in your work, I don’t mean you have to lose interaction with colleagues and skip things that relax you during a school day. You need to decide for yourself how your valuable time is spent and where you can be more flexible.
4. Invest time in professional education.
I still think that one-size-fits-all stuff meetings are of no value. In my two years in a public school system, I have learned more from learning on my own and from my mentor that by attending PDs at school. The reason is that schools arrange PDs that target the majority of teachers and are very general in most cases. If I have a specific struggle or a gap I need to fill, such general information at PDs brings little or no value to me as a teacher. The lesson is – invest your time in educating yourself on your own terms. You can choose a blog to follow, a podcast to listen, a course to take, a club to join that answer your specific questions and bring strategic value. In fact, the most valuable information I learned in my profession was from an online club, a few podcasts that I listen to while driving, and by observing my mentor.
Availability of resources online makes it easier to have your personal PD in the car or while grocery shopping. Make it yours, make it practical, make it convenient.
5. Invest time in your passion.
I cannot imagine my life without my passions. I entirely cannot live having only my job responsibilities. In fact, having interests that are entirely different from your professional path allows you see things from a very different perspective and take new approaches related to time-saving, raising productivity, happiness level, satisfaction, and personal development. On top of that, the interests that I pursue after my day work makes me much happier and healthier than I have ever been since I started working in a public school system.
Following your passions and exploring your interest give fuel to your thoughts and boost your personal development. If you still find some imbalance in your career, it can be compensated by your dedication to things that ignite you and keep you awake at five a.m. over the weekend. Does it sound like taking more stuff on and overworking on weekends? Not at all. Whatever your passion might be, it helps you tune out the unnecessary noise in your head and focus on what brings you mental or financial stability. Exploration of your passions will allow you to look at the world differently and put things in perspective. What seemed to be a glooming task or responsibility at work will not seem that way anymore; you will find creative ways to do more in less time, to stop stressing over trifles, be more efficient and, therefore, happier.
I honestly think those five pieces of advice can be helpful if you put your mind into it. By no means, it’s a fast transformation. It’s a process that requires your dedication because new habits and mindset you will create will liberate you from negativity and the feeling of being overworked.
Good luck!
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