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.

Teaching is becoming expensive for teachers when there’s no budget

“Teaching is becoming expensive for teachers when there’s no budget” read my Facebook friend’s wall post. He was buying an adaptor cable to show YouTube clips from his I-pod on a TV. I thought that’s great – it’s cheaper than DVDs and you have it for your own use too. But then someone posted that they were contemplating buying a video projector because the school couldn’t afford one.

Since I like to have money to do things like... pay my bills – I flung myself into this debate. I posted: “I'd never spend so much for school unless I was being directly compensated. It's time districts/ministries started valuing the work we do rather than assume we are going to sacrificingly make up for the inadequacies of a system that undervalues its teachers not to mention students”

People on-line did not like that.

To paraphrase the next 5 posts: “We shouldn’t need to pay out of pocket but we do it because it’s good for the kids. If you don’t get what you think is needed students suffer because you can’t do the best possible job. Unfortunately it’s part of the job, but teachers who spend on their classroom take pride in having quality materials for students and parents appreciate it.”

I doubt you’d find a doctor bringing in her own personal supply of gauze, disinfectant and syringes for her shift in the emergency ward - in addition to the defibrillator she bought yesterday since the hospital didn’t have enough. How is it any less ridiculous when teachers do it?

It’s for the kids. I’ve said it before. I’m sure you have too. We’re not heartless – we’re teachers! But before we wax sentimental about why we went into teaching let’s ask a critical question. When we say “it’s for the kids” – which kids are we talking about?

Is it the kids of the teacher who has the economic and social positioning to be able to essentially donate her money (and often time) for her students? What about the kids of the teacher who can’t? Are we saying that such a teacher doesn’t take pride in having quality materials for her students? That her students should settle for an inadequately funded classroom? Even if she can afford it – should she?

While we are fortunate to have autonomy in our classrooms they are not “our” classrooms. The classroom and teacher are embedded within a larger system tied to social, political and economic realities. That system has a mandate – to educate the future of the province. It is not like donating your time or money to a non-profit which does good works with kids. The ministry is not a charity. When we take it upon ourselves to make up for the inadequacies of the system, we enable it to get away with not fulfilling its mandate.

This article originally appeared in the BCTF 'Teacher Magazine': http://www.bctf.ca/uploadedFiles/Public/Publications/TeacherNewsmag/archive/2009-2010/2009-11/index.pdf

Sweating the “Small Stuff”, the large stuff and everything in between

Who hasn’t been agitated that they’ve dropped the ball on something? Who hasn't been too hard on themselves? I think this is a common trait of conscientious people. And conscientiousness is a trait of teachers in general.

Let’s face it - it’s rare that we make the kinds of errors that have profound adverse effects. Why are we so hard on ourselves? The world likely won’t come to an end because some error you’ve made. Why hold ourselves to a standard of perfection that doesn’t leave room for our human failings?

Someone no doubt will accuse me of spiraling down the slippery slope of laziness. Tell people to be easy on themselves for forgetting to return a phone call and before long they’ll be amputating the wrong limb in surgery!

That’s not dropping the ball.
That’s negligence, incompetence, systemic organizational dysfunction.
There’s a difference.

I bet that if you look back at ‘dropping the ball’ episodes in your life they were rarely of an earth shattering magnitude. When it comes to things of importance, most of us are on the ball! What many of us stress over are the inconvenient events that can be made-up for with a simple plan of action and an apology, forgiven with a bit of understanding, or taken as a lesson and moving on.

I’m not sure if it’s that we “sweat the small stuff” or that we don’t clearly differentiate between what small stuff is and what important stuff is. Failing to read a memo clearly is dropping the ball and nothing to beat yourself up about. Never reading a memo because you just can’t be bothered is a problem.

If we never dropped the ball we’d never get a chance to kick it…and honestly a good swift kick at an inanimate object can be a good de-stressor!

People just don't think we're stressed!

I recently took part in a business networking forum that involved entrepreneurs from various fields. I mentioned the work I do in teacher development around stress managment and wellness. The event coordinator gave me this look - which basically said - get serious. "In a group like this," she gestured to the business people and continued in a snooty tone, "you'd have a hard time selling that to anyone".

Luckily 10 years of teaching middle school have trained me well in quick, snappy responses to obnoxious comments. I took on my best don't-mess-with-the-teacher voice. "There is no one in the education industry who is unaware of the major problem of teacher stress". Then I rattled off statistics - 43% of teacher rehabiliation cases are psychological in nature mostly due to stress, one third of teachers quit the profession within 5 years in Canada, and just to throw higher education into my barrage of we-are-stressed defense, I sited OISE-UT's and the Ontario government's recent work in teacher induction, mentoring and renewal as a way to combat career burnout.

My selling style must be good, because in the ensuing discussion I won alot of support - including from the coordinator, who was looking sheepish - but it got me thinking: what are we not communicating as teachers?

The details of what we do for a living, the realities of what we face need to be known out there in the world beyond the school walls. Is it acceptable to you that your work is seen as inferior? Easy? Without substantial value?

Most teachers develop stress from being put in the unenviable position of having a personal commitment to providing top quality compassionate and educational service to a vulnerable popuation without quality funding to be able to implement it adequately. The result is taking it upon ourselves to make up for the inadequecies of the system.

Who is responsible for this communication? Teachers, administrators, parent advisory councils, unions, school districts? It should be all of us. We need to sell people who are not in education on the value of what we do and be clear on what it is exactly that we do! Only then will our needs be understood and met. It's time to get out there and get networking.