Change, the only constant

This year has brought many changes for me, many of them good, but the one that has pained me has been my lack of reflection and blogging. Today, we change that. I feel this year has been a weird one that kept me distracted from my own process as we have three new teachers in our department (and very good ones at that), I am back inside the school building and teaching with flexible seating (picture below), and I shifted into teaching the honors level of senior history called Contemporary World Issues. 

These were all great things, but they kept me from the groove that I had been in for the last few years as I had known my teaching team, classroom, curriculum, and got to focus on myself all previous years. Ironically, by focusing on others, it has really allowed me to see a different side of myself as an educator. One in which I do not have to devote my life to grading and curriculum, but rather, one in which I can mentor, create, teach, and grade while also developing a personal life beyond work by finding time to do things to relax and enjoy a school year in a different way. Many things have led me to change this year, this being year nine of my career at Nazareth, but a couple stand out as great demonstrations of the need to begin to “think differently” about education.

The first was that I had the opportunity to attend ISTE, or “Nerd Camp” as I like to call it, in San Antonio last summer and hear from George Couros who is the author of Innovator’s Mindset and an innovative principal. I like to consider him my innovation guru, although he may only know that from my favorites and tweets on Twitter, this summer he brought me back to the core of what I want to do as an educator. He reminded me that “If we want meaningful change, we have to make a connection to the heart before we can make a connection to the mind.” It is not that it was something I did not know, but I needed a reminder of it as I approached teaching a senior class with a legacy of being on the pessimistic side and a tough group to get invested into classes. At that moment, I committed to driving empathy into the core of what I do every day and recently got a reminder of the effectiveness educators can have when our curriculum was brought up in a college admission essay. Senior Bridget Lockie, Class of 2018, wrote and gave me permission to include:

“This year I have had the privilege to learn history in a nontraditional way. I have been required to reach beyond a textbook and learn by analyzing current world events and their contributions to and impacts on our global society, which is something I have never experienced before. During my first three years of high school, my history courses were limited to textbook learning and the memorization of facts, vocabulary terms, and dates. As important as these courses were in developing a firm knowledge base, they never truly resonated within me or ignited an enthusiasm to not only dig deeper, but extend my learning in new ways. My Contemporary World Issues course, or CWI, is opening windows to the world for me, as well as challenging me to look critically within myself and develop a more enlightened global perspective. In this class, stigmas and biases have been discussed openly which allows me to search out similarities between cultures and countries, as well as celebrate the inherent differences.”

As educators, we hope that we instill great values in kids, one of which for me is to inspire lifelong learning. I was taken aback by this because I felt that I wasn’t as calm, cool, and collected as usual as I was teaching outside of my comfort zone, but realized that when you build a great curriculum with a great team and get kids invested, they may feel things for learning that you will never see in the way you assess them. Therefore, maybe it was time to focus way more on the experience, the conversation, the connection, and the empathy than on the process that so many others used.

Another thing that really rattled me recently was a podcast from my business guru Adam Grant in his new podcast called WorkLife in which he discussed how people manage their emotions at work while trying to manage everyone else’s, and in doing so, often end up burning out. If you haven’t listened, check it out, but it hit way too close to home for me.

As teachers, we spend our day combatting constant pessimism, selling our curriculum, hiding our true feelings, and isolated in a room full of people most of our days, but when we come home we still can’t be home. How do we manage to have a personal life and professional life? I was asked this question by 2016 graduate Julia Durnell (Go Redbirds!) who is studying to be a social science education major. As part of her class, she had to interview an educator and I was delighted to be chosen by her. In answering her many, great questions, I entered a period of self-investigation. Do I separate myself from my job? What is my true goal? How long can I continue to do this without burning out?

As I reflected on this, I realized that I started this process a year ago by connecting more with teachers inside and outside my department, especially when sharing an office with our religion department. I had the opportunity to see what others were doing and invest myself into their curriculums as well. In having a large hiring class, more teachers are at events outside of school, allowing us to get out and appreciate a different side of work while establishing meaningful connections instead of simply being colleagues, something also addressed in an Adam Grant Work Life podcast episode. In being back in my classroom, I have created an open-door policy (Sorry John Hay, this one is a little different than yours #USHistoryjokes) in which I have a sign outside my door asking any teacher to come in and join our class randomly when they want, for as long as they want. Sadly, I have only been taken up on it by four teachers, but that is still four more than last year. 

Why do I mention this? It is not to come across as arrogant or ahead of the curve, but because it has allowed me to be happier in the classroom and more aware of what is going on beyond my classroom. As Spring Break finishes today, I look forward to a special time with my senior students. I know most complain about senioritis and having to motivate our kids looking forward to graduation, but I have to remain positive in how I see this time as well or else I will go crazy before they finish as all of my classes are senior level. It is a time where they try to move quickly as I remind them to slow down. It is a time where they are so excited for the future while reluctantly admitting they are going to miss what they currently have. It is a time where I get to send them off on an amazing new journey in life and hope for a few emails in return. And it is a time that will allow me to do a little less teaching and a lot more listening, golfing, and reflecting.

So what are my goals for the end of this year? Invest. Invest myself in my great department, working to co-teach some lessons and get to see them do the great things they do on a daily basis and learn from them. Invest myself in people beyond my department, observing and seeing what happens beyond our hallway. Invest into my curriculum, as it is a time to rebuild and recreate. And lastly, invest into myself by making sure that I allow myself to be real, relax, refresh, and then rejoin new students with the same creativity and energy that I hope to bring to the educational world on an annual basis.