Is This ONE Daily Habit Undermining Your Teaching Practice?

Welcome back, hard-working and amazing colleagues! I'm so grateful that you've chosen to stop and read.

OK, how many of our mornings begin this way...?

We engage with Our Electronic Devices of Choice and are promptly steered to "the funnies". We scroll, often lingering until we're left rushing around trying to finish getting ready for the day. These insidious little quotes and memes about our practice seem at first to be inocuous anecdotes and illustrations about teaching and teachers. What they do, however, isn't always immediately clear.

One of the things I say to students all the time is:

"Your mind believes what you tell it."

If that's true, then these cute little social media posts have us believing (if not simply agreeing with the creators) that parents are what's entirely wrong with teaching, as an example. The tiny creeps around tests, work load, and whatever else we struggle with gradually erode our ability to think objectively about our day-to-day work. They've become the evening news that hopes we'll stay glued to the rare catastrophies (and buy what the advertisers are selling) until we believe that they are the norm.

We giggle along with teachers turned comedians whose short, hilarious drivers seat video rants make us think only about what's bad about teaching. If this seems like an exaggeration, go back and count how many videos and memes are celebrations of things that point directly to our daily successes (of which there are plenty).

I'm not suggesting that diversions are bad. It's important for us to laugh at ourselves. As long as they remain temporary, and as long as they don't become our mindset. The problem is, only seeing images and hearing stories about what's going wrong can flip our brains so they only look for the bad. And, if left unchecked, they can steal our joy.

Our days are filled with joyful moments. Every single one of them. Anyone who's quick to argue that point with me may only be thinking about the things that their environment is telling them otherwise, and that they're starting to believe it. Yes, some of you may have had personal belongings destroyed by students and/or have been physically attacked and harmed by them. Others of you may have been verbally abused by adult caregivers and done wrong by coworkers. We struggle because we need additional support for students that isn't readily available. And, no, trying to focus on the positive parts of our days doesn't entirely make the tough things go away.

Yet, here we are. Trying to learn more. Trying to find new ways to show up, so we bring our best selves to school every day. We struggle when we get, and then feel stuck.

We do hard things with busy lives, every day. And, our mindset is steering the ship. We have built classrooms that are safe spaces for all brains, yet sometimes there are behaviors that we can't deal with. Unfortunately, our teacher training often had no way of fathoming what those needs are, much less being able to equip us adequately to meet those needs day in and day out.

Don't let someone who doesn't know you--your struggles nor your joys--rob you of the reasons why you became a teacher and why you keep putting down your device and getting to work. If you're not sure how big a part of the equation our thinking is, I encourage you to check this out.

Keep being amazing, important humans!

And, as always,

Happy snacking!

Chef Charles

Head chef

teacherssnacks.com

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