It’s hard to believe it’s already been two weeks. It feels like it’s been two months already with the number of things that happen every day. But so far, so good. Though it’s been stressful, busy, and challenging, I really am loving it. And honestly so far, it hasn’t been even close to how stressful student teaching was. I didn’t realize how many lessons I learned during last semester–both about myself and about teaching–until the first week of teaching this year
Priorities.
Part of the reason it’s been so much less stressful has been a new approach I’ve taken to getting things done at night. Shout-out to Laura from Wheeling for the idea to have a time limit dictate what I get done for the night, rather than a (always unreasonably long) to-do list. Every day after school, I decide how many hours I’m willing to work after school. Usually that’s about 3-5 hours. Then I assign a number to everything on my to-do list, 3 for things that are absolutely crucial to do ASAP and would benefit my students the most, 0 for things that I would like to get done, but not as beneficial. 3’s get tackled first, and then I move down. As I move through the to-do list, as I’m making my handouts and rubrics and finding examples, I glance at the post-it I put on my computer that asks, “How much is what I’m doing right now benefiting the kids?” Fixing the lines in the rubric so that they’re perfectly symmetrical? Probably not much. So that’s when I demand myself to stop and move on.
Even with self-monitoring like this, it’s usually just 3’s that get done. But guess what? Even if I just get the 3’s one night, I find that life goes on the next day.
It’s an exercise in self-forgiveness, valuing me-time, and being proactive with stress, and it has been keeping me remarkably sane. It’s helped me separate work and home in a way I never have in my life. Given, I have nights where I’m exhausted, I go home, and I flounder. But in the past 2 weeks, that hasn’t happened more than twice. And I’m in a better mood for the students and my co-workers the next day because of it.
Releasing the Pressure for Perfection.
With the prioritized to-do lists has come the necessity to let go of perfection. I’ve stopped beating myself up for not getting things done. I apologize to students if lessons don’t go as smoothly as they could have, and I try admit to co-workers upfront when I know things are not going to get done. I ask for help from other teachers. A lot. It’s still hard for me, but I’m working on accepting (and almost expecting…) imperfection from myself. And guess what. Life still goes on. And I’m happier. And I think I’m still doing an ok job.
I feel like I’m writing a diary of someone going through perfectionist therapy. I think first-year teaching is just that, actually.
In terms of the actual teaching itself, it’s been great. Challenging, but great. Middle schoolers are so much younger than I was expecting, but I’m loving it. For the most part, they’re curious, enthusiastic, and still have elements of the industrious stage of development. Given, there are always exceptions and they also are all 13 and behave as such, but overall, it’s great.
Most of my classes are really good groups and I adore teaching writing–which is fortunate, as it’s 4 of my 6 classes. I’m so glad I taught Creative Writing during student teaching, because I find myself borrowing so much of what I learned–including confidence. As for my reading and AVID class, I’m learning as I go. Though I thought that having 4 preps would be insane, it hasn’t been nearly as bad as I thought. It helps that I’ve been doing very similar things in my 7th and 8th grade writing classes and that I have point people for each prep to see what others are doing, but I think the biggest difference is that before, I had 2, high school-level, 90-minute preps, and now I have 4, 47-minute, middle-level preps. Hopefully I can keep the positivity through our first few units, but for now, I’m getting through it. It definitely could be worse.
More in a week or two. Off to go relish the 3-day weekend.
You might also like: The New Teacher’s Survival Guide: Managing the Workload from The Educator’s Room.
Pedablogical Thoughts 