Teaching seems to be a career characterized by high highs and low lows. Some days leave me grinning ear to ear and other days I feel like a pile of jell-o melting in a hot kitchen. It's so important on days like that to fall back on pre-established stress management routines to keep the passion for teaching alive and maintain a positive attitude. In her article "10 Stress Busting Secrets of Great Teachers," Vicki Davis lays out the framework for a stress management plan that allows teachers to focus on the positive and reflect on better approaches for the future. We are about a quarter through the school year now, so the purpose of this blog post is to reflect on which of these techniques I have been using well and where I need to implement them better by focusing on a specific day that was challenging for me. One of the hardest days I've had so far this year was one of the first days of school. I had a bunch of vocabulary I needed to teach my students before they did a lab the next day. I had told the students that I was really passionate about hands-on learning and promised we would keep lecturing and note-taking to a minimum, but sometimes taking notes is necessary in science class. I had planned this activity that I thought would take about 20 min where the kids were to make note cards on wave anatomy vocabulary. It would require me to be talking for most of those 20 minutes, but I figured that would be okay because once they finished making their note cards we would move on to a student-centered activity. Little did I realize how long it takes a middle schooler to make a set of flash cards... 60 minutes of note card making later, I realized we had spent the entire period taking notes and wouldn't have time to do the fun activity I had planned. I had no idea what to do other than apologize that it took so long and promise they would use the notes from today to do the lab tomorrow. It broke my heart to hear kids grumbling on the way out of the door about how "not fun" that class was and how disappointed they were after expecting more from me as a new, exciting-seeming teacher. I felt pretty crushed after school that day, and knew I needed to do something about it. The first thing I did aligns with Step 6 and Step 8 in Davis's article: I exercised with a friend. I went climbing with a friend of mine and while climbing we discussed my day and how it made me feel. She gave me great advice that helped me let go of my frustration and then move into the rest of my day feeling better. This helped me forgive myself for that bad lesson, and set the framework for the next step -- doing better next time! After school the next day I planned out the next two weeks of my unit, making sure to find a bunch of fun, hands-on activities to do that my students and I could look forward to. Instead of dwelling on the negative, I proactively addressed the situation and used my unpleasant experience as inspiration and learning for the future. Obviously, I have other days like the dreaded notecard day where I wasn't as prepared as I wanted to be or found myself acting less positively than I would like to with my students. It's great to recharge my arsenal of stress management tools by reading articles like Davis's -- it helps me remind myself that I am not alone with these struggles and accept that they are a normal part of teacher life. The most important thing, I believe, is to push through the struggle and keep on showing up every day caring about my students and trying to do my best, without putting undue pressure on myself. I am continuously celebrating small victories and reminding myself to enjoy the process of learning how to do this whole teaching thing a little bit better every day.
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Emma BooneFirst year 8th grade PBL math/science teacher and graduate student, wondering a bunch and figuring a few things out here and there. Archives
December 2018
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