Self-Care for Teachers: Telling Our Happy Stories

Tired? Worn out? No worries: That’s teacher par-for-the-course in October. The honeymoon is over, and the holidays aren’t here yet. 

Quick: Tell me 5 good stories that happened to you in or related to your classroom this week. 

In a minute, I’ll tell you 5 good stories that happened to me this week. But before I do, just take a moment to remember that an important part of persevering as a teacher is self care, and an important part of self care is hanging out with positive people and remembering the positive stories. Apparently I do this in this blog every October (see also here) and spring (see here and here).

So, at the end of the first quarter and the ominous month of October, here are 5 of my good stories from the week: 

Monday: I remembered the morning of the 10th grade class on which my lesson plan prompted me to introduce the presentation, that I’d responded to some summer reading by committing to use some TED talks as models. I quickly opened the document I’d started with TED resources and cued the one resource copied in there (Amy Cuddy’s "Your Body Language May Shape Who You Are") for class. I showed the first 5 minutes, pointing out content and modeling students could use. The students were engaged, and we had a good mini-lesson. Friday, the day of the 1-2 minute presentations, after one student's amazing presentation, using all the patterns from the TED introduction and more, the rest of the students concurred: “That was just like TED!”

Tuesday: My dear juniors are a very introverted class. Last year, every quarter, they chose overwhelmingly to share their independent reading by writing a review on Goodreads—only 1 or 2 choosing to talk in front of their classmates. This year a majority chose to share in class. I’m happy that class feels safe, that they’re getting more comfortable sharing verbally, and that the variety, shared both in class and online, was eclectic: from nonfiction like Being Mortal, Half the Sky, A Higher Loyalty,  The Girl with the White Flag, and The Spiritual Lives of Great Composers, to fiction like When We Were Orphans and For the Time Being. 

Wednesday: When I arrived in my classroom in the morning, I looked at the corner of my desk I’d designated a “parking lot” for sticky notes with questions I’d promised students to find out about. (I’d just established this the day before when I checked the implementation plan I’d made for my book discussion group on Marzano’s The New Art and Science of Teaching.) I saw a Post-It note with my classic green-ink scrawl, “Foreign language citation.” I promised a student I’d have that information before the next class—that’s first period! Momentary panic, followed by focused perusal and sticky-noting of my MLA style manual. After the mini-lesson, when I asked if there was anyone else who needed information about citing foreign language sources, one other student joined us at the empty pod of desks in the back. I assured them, “Don’t stress out about doing this perfectly and then decide going forward to avoid using your first language sources: The ability to find information and perspectives in more than one language is a great gift. Use it! Let’s just use today as a jumping-off point to begin to explore how to do it with expert ethos.” 
   
Thursday: Before our end-of-quarter class share of an independent reading book read this quarter, I caught the 2 sophomores pictured above actually referring to the bulletin board listing books students were reading first quarter, talking about what they wanted to read next quarter!

Friday: A student asked me, "Out of the books you recommended, these 3 look interesting. Which should I take?" She fans out copies of Evicted, Killers of the Flower Moon, and The Book Thief. Working hard not to scare her off with whoops or fist-pumps, I calmly reply, "Why don’t you take all of them, read the first chapter, and decide which one you want to read first?" "Really? Wow!"

Reflection, gratitude, and self-care: Three words you’ll hear frequently in education these days. I find them so crucial--hanging out with positive people and telling positive stories. Here are mine. What are yours?