New Year's Resolutions of an Educator

By Amber Burnett

​The night before the school year is about to start, educators have only one life saver in our sea of anxiety; there is almost always an inservice or professional development a few days before the students arrive. In that final week, as we can practically hear our summertime recess clock ticking it’s final seconds, many of my colleagues and fellow educators dive into a period of deep reflection and we incessantly make promises to ourselves. We hope and recite that this year will be easier, and that reciprocity and gentleness will flow from our students and school administration more plentifully than the many tasks we are given. We promise to be gentle with ourselves and have a renewed passion and energy for our course design, field trips and instructional plans.  However, within a couple of days of  inservice and professional development we are compelled to swiftly alter our resolve as we must meditate or pray for the serenity to accept the things we can not change about our school systems.  

Indeed we find out that there are some things we can not change no matter how logical or beneficial to the students that change may be. We can argue, show research that proves our correctness, or beg, but small class size and a teacher’s student load is never considered by some of our schools administration when discussing enhancement of  instruction. We find out or reaffirm that the true educational growth a school desires for its students is relegated to a mission statement to lure parents and appease communities. At the same time, we know we can’t change our school policy makers’ misplaced obsessions with standardized tests.  We can’t change the fact that often teachers are put under a surmountable pressure to “pass” failing students or that teachers are often punished for demanding work ethic and effort from our students. We can’t change the fact that students come to our class completely unprepared with the basic skills needed to produce in our class. We can not change the fact that our profession as educators in the United States is given no reverence. We can not change the fact that educators are often seen as expendable caffeined chattel by school systems and that there is no such thing as a teacher having a family or any life outside of their educational duties.  For a teacher to demand time to rest, be with family and enjoy recreation is sinful and is seen to surly diminish the education students deserve. We can’t change the fact that teachers are hardly ever consulted about designing a class, even if they have proof that the design will be effective. Although teachers are key change agents of a community, we are often discouraged from offering any real input and designs for educational or pedagogical practices. Course autonomy and respect for our expertise in instructional strategies is utterly non-existent in most school systems. And no matter how loud the opportunity gap or academic performance deficiency is , the educator’s opinions and expertise on how to mend those gaps is often dismissed and in some case not even welcomed to be voiced.

The summer recess of a teacher is spent participating in revitalizing activities be that a margarita at the beach or a professional development opportunity! We are fortified and encouraged by our successes of the previous school year and haunted by our failures. At the onset of the school year that starts with in service responsibilities or professional development, educators seemed plagued with a summer glow, resident smile and exciting plans engaging young people. But then we are smothered with the anxiety of all of the things we can not change or even influence in some way. How do we keep that renewed energy and passion for our course design, instructional strategies, and student engagement?  How do we keep a resident smile and summer glow all year in spite of our hopes and dreams for our students being undermined by administrative practices? The following are a list of promises that I have made to myself over the last 7 years of my 17 years of teaching. It took me a while to learn that these are the only real promises I can keep to sustain myself.

1. No matter how frustrated you get, STAY SOLUTION ORIENTED !!!!
    First, know that you are not alone in your frustrations and sometimes utter disgust with what we see as injustices towards our students. These frustrations can range from the injustice of not having a registered nurse full time for students who absolutely need their services to having to buy your own supplies just to have the basic needs any educator would require to do the job. While it is important to lean on, cry, vent and have an “amen corner” in your colleagues, it is your duty to create solutions and innovate practices to minimize these frustrations. Even with your colleagues problems, after intense listening, try to offer a solution. Being in the habit of this creates an empathetic working environment and creates a deeper rapport with your colleagues. We are educators. Our jobs require constant innovation. We must use that constant practice of being instructionally innovative to give us confidence in creating solutions for problems we can not control.

This sometimes requires we educators to be somewhat  rebellious or discreetly insubordinate, most especially when we are held to a uniform curriculum that does not allow for teachers to create lessons that respond to how her students are truly engaged. When you close your classroom door ALWAYS make sure that the learning environment belongs to you and all that your students’ need to learn and stimulate their interests in learning. Your classroom, your students and your ever evolving and responsive instructional strategies do not belong to district mandates. They do not belong to your principal’s mandates. They most especially do NOT belong to some corporation’s successful bid to mandate a uniform curriculum that they convinced the school system to buy.  I tell all first year teachers that I have mentored that when you make your classroom yours and your students, everyone and everything else will work itself out, most especially when you focus on be responsive to their academic needs.   In short, “always ask forgiveness and never permission” Your students will know you as their advocate and will always help to sustain your declarations of instructional sovereignty!

Being instructionally effective comes with a wide range of challenges including school policy makers lack of focus on deciding what’s best for maximizing a learning environment for students. So when your principal proudly announces that your school will be receiving 500+ more students, know that  you’re right to be still emotionally tangled. You are right to worry about what that means for your new student course load. True, there may not even be enough seats for each student to seat themselves, but try to open up your classroom space as much as possible. Indoor plants help too, especially since oxygen and peace will be most sought after! Another solution would be to see of you can balance the student load with a common content colleague, if they are not overwhelmed with their classroom numbers as well. The most powerful solution to this sort of problem is to try to encourage the parents of our students to speak out against these practices.

All and all, we rely and must rely on our colleagues to solution storm inside and outside of district mandates that may hinder our instructional effectiveness or enhance our stress level.
    
2. Do not fight battles and whole wars you can not win!
Beyond fighting the insanity of some decisions by school policy makers, some of our battles are with our students destructive habits and disengagement in our classrooms. Just like  fighting school policies you can not change, fighting or spending too much time focusing your attention on a student’s undesirable behavior is a robbery to the 29 + other students’ needs and academic growth. If the school does not have a strong enough policy to enforce certain behaviors or academic accountability, then educators have no choice but to document accurately and reprimand the student quickly, almost as just a reminder. For example, the educator’s battle with student cell phones is very real. No matter how many studies come out to show us how damaging and distracting the cell phone is in class, you will have some parents that argue for student rights of personal property and that is why some school policy makers concede to that right.  Frankly, if it is not a battle your school district or school is willing to get into, then you must look to the small victories that exist in record keeping. During report card conferences, it may impress a student or their parents to see the number of days their young person was distracted by their cell phone per the number of days that exist in that quarter’s marking period!

3. Teachers gotta have a life too! Our health is truly our wealth . . .  and our students’ wealth too!
I have been a teacher for 17 years and in that time I have attended 4 funerals of educators who died due to failing heart conditions and high stress levels. You would think that would make school policy makers reconsider the ever mounting workload that is placed on teachers. But it will not. We have to do that for ourselves. No one is built to teach all day, deal with and redirect student behaviors all day, lesson plan, and then come home and grade papers all night.  If you want to be a better educator, you must remember that you are a human being and you need time for rest and recreation too. Here is a list of things I commit to every week during the school year that may help you. Do I keep to it every week? No. But it is an anchor for me and helps me to have optimum energy for facilitating instruction.

1. Make sure that 3 to 4  times a week you spend on some sort of cardiovascular fitness. This includes dancing! The most successful and enjoyable way to apply this is to create a walking, line-dancing, or joggers groups with your colleagues or content team! At our school, the English teachers meet every school morning , 30-45 minutes before school is about to start to walk a mile or two. During this walk we just talk about anything we want to talk about, usually nothing too serious. For those of us that are not morning people, we also have afternoon sessions.
2. One to Two days a school week, go straight home and do nothing to do with school. Don’t worry the work will be waiting for you when you get back and you weren’t going to finish reading and grading all 150 of those essays anyway!
3. Spend time with your family and loved ones. They need you too.
4. Find an organization or group that nurtures your passion as an educator
5. Participate in passions and interest outside of your passion as an educator
6. Make sure you take naps when you can. Get plenty of rest.

4.  Do not “pass” a failing student. Let the admin change grades if they want to.
Educators can lose their certification falsifying grades in any way. Administrators have a unique power to change grades with the caveat they have a compelling reason to do so. Keep and print your records. Most importantly, keep some student work to demonstrate either what the student has done or what they have not done. I keep a master binder of  student assignments  

5. If you are not enjoying what you are teaching, change it!
Your job is to connect with and engage your students which is impossible if you are not into what you are teaching. Within optimum instructional autonomy, as long as you are focusing on the core standards and a clear objective, there is no opposition to you being creative and even re-writing the curriculum. For example, when I was forced to impose this scripted, direct instruction, phonetic awareness drill on my 8th grade students, my students were not only disengaged but they began to hate reading. Every morning, for the first hour,  we would do call and responses of random phrases to practice reading aloud. Although the students, I worked with were reading below grade level, they did not need to be tortured with rote practices that most especially turn students off from seeking literature. I decided to rebel and changed my class into a class we called “The Literary World of Music”. Every morning started with a song chosen by me and then Fridays the students could select our Monday song. We would read the lyrics and have dynamic discussion on the meaning of some of the lyrics. We would analyze the use of literary devices and figurative language constantly. Gradually, I would add some poetry or an intriguing short story or article but we NEVER went back to that scripted curriculum again. Reading levels absolutely improved and more importantly, my students learned to have a love affair with literature.

6. Develop partnerships and good collegial relationships with your colleagues.
Be it your content area team or your colleagues that share your students with you, often we are all we have to sustain us. Isolation is the worst habit of some educators and it does nothing but reduce morale and make one feel as though they are all alone to face the constant challenges we have as educators.

7. Create a positive jar or journal.
Write down 2 or at least one positive thing that happened per day. On bad days go back and read some of these journal entries.

Here’s the truth about teachers who love what they do. One teachable moment can cause us to chip off resolutions 2 and 3, easily! Those 2 out of 7 resolutions focus solely on the well being of the educator. By October, most of us have forgotten it is okay to want to just go home after school or, dare I mention, use a personal day!