New Website

www.teachingwellbeing.com


It's taken a while to find my voice but I've found it. It's somewhat ironic that when I was teaching and burning out and would have had so much to say I had no blog. I'm finding, as I work in wellness more, that so much of what we stress about as teachers isn't always about our jobs, but it's the nature of our jobs that doesn't easily allow us to have the space to work out the other aspects of our lives. Stress is personal.

I'd like to invite a space for healing, sometimes it's about teaching stress, sometimes it's about life - but it is always connected. We are one person - sometimes we're a teacher, sometimes a friend, sometimes a daughter, a lover, a consumer, a leader, a follower, a sister, a mother, an auntie, a stranger - we area all those things and more - and we can't just shut ourselves off as we move from one role to the other. Trying to write about specific teaching stress is sometimes limiting - so I'm changing how I'm going to write - and where I'm going to write.

On my new site I'll continue and expand the journey of moving away from stress and towards wellbeing. I'll see you there. :)

http://www.teachingwellbeing.com/

Self-acceptance and stress

Self-acceptance is not complacency.Wanting better for ourselves, aspiring to move from stress to well-being and accepting our imperfections are not mutually exclusive states of mind.

Of course, strong, educated, confident people find a way to live amongst societal pressures and uphold their own self-worth. Empowered, conscious living requires us to actively create the life we aspire to. Most of what is presented to us as the ‘ideal’ way to live requires us to uphold images and behaviours that are dysfunctional. These images need to be interrogated so we are clear as to what we are aspiring to.

It is important to evaluate our shortcomings, but within a larger picture of what we are trying to accomplish. Life is not only about achieving our aspirations and getting "a bit better everyday". It is navigating the highs and lows of the road of aspiration.

There are times on the path to go forward, and there are times to stop and rest. Wisdom and self-reflection allow you to discern that for yourself. Our quest to "do a bit better everyday" can't be done in the same paradigm that drives workaholicism, overwhelm and stress.

Admitting to having days where everything falls apart and we don’t reach the summit we were aiming for is not begrudging those who can handle adversity better than us or who are better off. It is pointless to compare ourselves to others because the only one who is going to live your life is you. Finding within ourselves some humility and gentleness to accept that not everyday is going to be heroic, is not wallowing in self-pity -- it's accepting the moment for what it is in that space of time.

If we can’t admit to having an “off” day without being told we might be wallowing in self-pity or begrudging others their wellbeing, we are setting up for ourselves an impossible standard of living and wellbeing to aspire to.

Gladwell Off the Mark on Class Size

A few weeks ago Outliers and the Tipping Point author, Malcolm Gladwell, gave the keynote address at the Imagining Ontario's Future Conference. He's a brilliant writer and thinker - but if he wants to speak on K-12 education he should spend some time in a classroom. Preferably a class of 35 Grade 7s in a portable resourced and designed for 25, in the unaircondiditoned heat of a sweltering Ontario June day.

He caused a bit of a stir in education circles. He said that reducing class size was pursing a dead end - what mattered most was improving the quality of teachers.

Now I agree that quality teachers are key to having a good educational experience, but what kind of quality education can an individual deliver in an over-filled, under-resourced classroom?

Not surprisingly, the Toronto Star's Saturday's paper on May 16 included many letters from incensed teachers.

I was one of them. Here's what I wrote:

Advice to Mr. Gladwell: stick to what you know. Teaching K-12 is not like speaking to a university lecture hall full of grown-ups. Teachers negotiate diverse levels of academic ability, facility in English, behavioural tendencies, and home-environment influences in classes of children from ages 4-18. In his book, Outliers, Mr. Gladwell states it takes 10,000 hours to be an expert in any field. I have my 10,000 hours in teaching K-12; he has about 10,000 to go.

No Air-Brushing Please!

Yesterday I had plans to do 12 sun salutations when I woke up, go to work, come home and go for a walk to enjoy the warm, sunny day. That would be followed by making dinner and lunch for tomorrow, call a friend to make plans, prepare a workshop, prepare some applications for courses, update this blog, and about 6 other items on my ever-growing to-do list, finished of with a half hour of yoga.

I managed to wake up, go to work, take a short walk, eat dinner, call a friend (who wasn't even home - so that cut down on time used up!) and research some applications. I felt frazzled - because I hadn't accomplished anything that I felt I really needed to. Then I felt cruddy - because I hadn't completed my list. Then I felt guilty - because I don't even have toddlers to care for and I still couldn't get much done so early in the week. Then I felt cruddy again - because if I really were a superwoman I'd have toddlers - or atleast a cat.

But I did manage to sit in meditation for 5 short minutes - just long enough to quell the growing anxiety in my chest. In that quiet, I asked myself: who am I competing with that I have this anxiety about having it all together?

We are fed this socially air-brushed ideal of what our daily life should look like. We should all be happily married, economically secure, accomplishing everything in an organized and optimized fashion, eathing perfectly balanced meals, and filling our day with perfectly balanced activities and goals, and of course looking quite perfect as well with no interruptions, dramas, or emotional reactions to anything or anyone.

If that's not the photo of our daily life, we must be doing something wrong. Or so we're led to believe.

Real people develop real character and life experience for the very reason that their life isn't airbrushed. It's brushing up against imperfection that gives us our wisdom, strength, compassion, stories and laugh lines.

Give yourself a break. You don't have to do everything, and you don't have to do it perfectly. No one is watching. No one is going to evalute you. Do the work that takes care of you and those you have in your care. The rest of the to-do list will get done - you know it will. Commit to not doing it with anxiety. Every morning and evening I light a candle, do some relaxing breaths, remember what is important to me, what I'd like to accomplish, what I need and what I am grateful for. Sometimes all I can manage is 2 minutes, sometimes I have time for a 30 minute meditation. The point is that it calms my centre, refocuses me on what is important and what isn't. The calm beginning and end to my day assures me that everything will be ok, that I'm doing fine.

In the fashion world air-brushing has been exposed for the unrealistic expectation-maker that it is. Jessica Simpson is celebrated on the cover of this issue of Marie-Claire sans make-up or retouching. We should keep in mind to not try to live up to air-brushed expectations of daily living as well.

What's Your Key?

I wonder if I would have read anything on this blog and considered it helpful when I was at my stressed-out-teacher worst?

Back then I’m not even sure I knew I was stressed out. I think I assumed I was fine.

I mean – I felt stress – all the telltale signs of it – but it never occurred to me to see that as something negative even though it felt negative. I was just doing the daily grind of what every teacher does, flavoured by my own teaching ideals. I just assumed since I loved being a teacher this must just be how it was supposed to feel. It never occurred to me to question the job itself and how it’s done. ‘That’s just how teaching is’ is the message I heard.

In June – after the bulk of the year is done, reporting is done and you’re basically just holding the kids at bay until the holidays – I’d have a giant crying meltdown once I got home. I’d always assumed this was normal. Until I realized it happened every June. After my fourth June, it also happened at the end of August – right when you’re supposed to be refreshed and enthusiastic to start another year.

That’s when I knew I was stressed out. Stress wasn’t the key – unhappiness was.

It was the key that unlocked the door or my denial and placed me on a path to wellness.

Everyone has their key. My friend got a big tumour (luckily benign) - that was her key.

Until teaching becomes a profession where teacher wellness is approached proactively, rather than reactively; until unreasonable workload is considered a problem and not a norm – we need to be on the lookout for our key and open the door for ourselves to wellbeing.

Keeping Busy?

Are you keeping busy?

A couple of people asked me this recently - a part of a long-time-no-see kind of greeting.

My automatic response was: I'm busier than I need to be.

I wasn't being entirely honest. Ok - not at all honest, actually. The truth is I haven't been busy lately. Work has slowed to a comfortable pace and I'm enjoying my time just.. enjoying things, taking things slow. What was it that kept me from answering honestly? It was like some subliminal vibe informing me that the appropriate response is: Yes, I've been keeping busy.

What is it with our society? How did BUSY become a vituous quality worthy of a friendly greeting? If I'm not "keeping busy" then what is the image being projected upon me? That I'm unprofessional? Unintelligent? Spoiled for having time on my hands? Sloth-like?

I'm not trying to make a big issue out of a small well-meaning comment by friends. It just made me realize that our society in general seems to have an obsession with BUSYness? Are we afraid the BUSYness gods are going to come raging at us and give us a good talking-to about being slackers! Yikes! Can't you be working at what is important and living life without being busy? How can we ever discover peace and create a life where stress doesn't cause negative anxiety and resentment if BUSYness holds such a prominent place in our psyches?

It haunts my psyche too. I'd like to exorcise it! I don't want to be busy. I'd like to be purposeful. I'd like to do what I need to do, choose to do, want to do with my time. The hours in the day are too precious to waste on being busy.

Fines for Detentions?

Student behaviour can be the most challenging and stressful aspect of our job. A New Jersey school district has proposed fining parents for their kid's detentions.

http://wcbstv.com/watercooler/paying.for.detention.2.1323136.html

I chuckled at this at first, maybe because it's a Friday in dreary November and thought - great what if we could outsource our marking too!

Then I thought... how many times have you given detention to the same student over and over even after phone calls home and trying to work out a behaviour plan? Causes of consistently inappropriate behaviour usually run deep and are complex and I'm not sure if a fine would be a solution. On the other hand, sadly, an impact on a person's wallet might have more weight than a face-to-face meeting with a teacher.

Teachers often say that they need to spend more of their time disciplining than teaching. That reality should concern everyone, regardless of how you feel about the suggestion in the article.