The other day, I was talking to a new teacher acquaintance from a completely different part of the country. As one might expect when two people in education get together, we had plenty to talk about, even though we had never met before. At one point, our conversation turned to the idea of a “perk” in professional life. We reflected that for many working adults, a perk might involve something like a holiday bonus or reimbursement for meals purchased during work-related meetings.
Teaching obviously doesn’t come with any benefits like that; a perk might look like five minutes to use the bathroom without running into some kind of obstacle. The harsh reality of being a teacher is that as wonderful as it can be, daily life in any school has many areas of discomfort that are not easy to manage. Rather than futilely hoping that one day these issues might just go away, it makes far more sense for us to find lasting ways to work with the challenges that are germane to our profession.
When teachers leave the classroom behind to embark upon another professional journey, they talk about all the things they miss, like working with kids. One thing we can all let go of with nary a backward nostalgic glance? Grading papers. Even when we have good systems in place for managing the never-ending influx of student work, it can be stressful to be in a job where the paper piles never seem to go away. While there will likely never be a way to teach without student work accumulating, many of us have the tendency to grade every assignment we collect out of the belief that kids will expect everything to come back with that kind of result.
As an alternate pathway, one thing we can do is consider differentiating feedback from grades. Informally, we should ideally give our classes feedback on their work each day, even if that takes the form of a quick response to a short activity or summarizer. If every smaller assessment we give moves logically toward a larger goal, then there is no need to grade every single thing that winds up in our hands.
Instead, we can accustom students to a culture of providing feedback in a variety of ways: verbally or in writing, holistically or individually. If we adjust expectations to focus on where improvement is needed and not constantly attach a grade to everything, we can lighten a heavy workload just enough to make life more tenable. At the end of the day, grading is going nowhere, and it’s an uncomfortable part of working with kids. However, that doesn’t mean we cannot try to make some worthwhile tweaks to our processes.
Teachers might have some semblance of control within the microcosms of their own classrooms, but even that is a limited state of being. In truth, instruction can be disrupted at any time, and so can our professional lives. We don’t always know when students will be called out of class, when a fire drill will happen, or when snow will cancel school at a crucial moment during any given instructional unit. Simply put, our control over time is limited in general life, and even more so in teaching.
While there is nothing to be done about what cannot be controlled, we can shift our mindsets to include more agility in planning. When circumstances take away valuable instructional time, the most important pivot anyone can make is to prioritize what students cannot possibly get by without learning before the end of the unit. For example, a math teacher might try to identify the concepts that most frequently recur in upcoming units so that students can use their cumulative knowledge to make progress. It might not be ideal to not finish everything, but that’s a reality teachers face. Rather than throw up our hands, it’s more productive to figure out where we can still exert the most amount of influence with limited control over conditions.
Most people don’t enjoy change, but it’s an unavoidable part of life in school buildings. Just as teachers are getting used to one thing (a schedule, a curriculum, a principal), a change comes along and blows everything out of the water once again. Sometimes, these changes make our lives easier; for example, my district is about to switch from paper-based time sheets to digital ones that can be submitted online (and yes, that has been a long time coming). Other changes, however, are harder to understand or get behind, such as how everyone feels when one really usable platform goes away and is replaced by one that is harder to use, or when an amazing administrator is promoted and leaves everyone in that school feeling bereft.
Whether shifts in our professional lives are desirable or otherwise, teachers must develop the kind of flexibility that acknowledges (happily or not) that things can never remain the same, and that we need to do our best with what is available. That is not to say that we should brush away natural feelings of loss; however, at some point, we need to move on and deal with whatever has happened as productively as possible. Suppose a new curriculum is missing elements that we really appreciated for students. There are probably some new features that we can really dig into that will be helpful for kids, and the sooner we get on board, the smoother the process will become. Ultimately, teachers must resign themselves to change, but it might be better for kids if we embrace what we can rather than hold onto unproductive feelings that interfere with moving forward.
If you’ve ever tested the limits of your bladder on a daily basis, you are probably in the teaching profession. Whenever summer break arrived and I was suddenly not in a classroom all day, it was quite noticeable that I had time for certain physical needs that had heretofore not been possible, like eating and using the bathroom. The problem is, daily life hardly looks like time off. Are teachers therefore doomed to be physically uncomfortable all the time?
The short answer is that it depends. Bathroom breaks might continue to elude teachers, but there are ways to handle other needs, like eating or getting enough rest. Building habits that involve planning and preparing meals in advance can prevent some of the pitfalls around eating nutritiously at work, and other mental health-approved moves like turning off digital devices an hour prior to bedtime can ensure that we leave work behind for the latter portion of our day. There is no way to change the nature of how demanding teaching can be on our bodies, but mitigating what we can does make a difference.
Teaching is rewarding, inspiring, and fulfilling. However, the discomfort that accompanies the profession cannot be brushed aside or discounted. For anyone who wishes to remain in the classroom, finding ways to manage the reality of the job is essential to building a lasting career in education. Otherwise, each day becomes filled with feelings of stress, which leads to eventual burnout. As we head into holiday break, thinking about one way to make life a little more comfortable will set the tone for a successful new calendar year.
Written by Miriam Plotinsky, Education World Contributing Writer
Miriam Plotinsky is an instructional specialist with Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland, where she has taught and led for more than 20 years. She is the author of several education books with W.W. Norton and ASCD. She is also a National Board-Certified Teacher with additional certification in administration and supervision. She can be reached at www.miriamplotinsky.com or via Twitter: @MirPloMCPS
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