Oh October. This is often a hard month for teachers. The honeymoon phase of September is over. The true colors of your students are starting to show (for better or for worse). Kids start testing the systems you’ve put in place to keep your classroom running smoothly. The grading is starting to pile up and it starts to feel overwhelming. The days get shorter and darker and colder and more frustrating. Where I teach, we also have parent/teacher conferences, homecoming, and the first quarter ends in October, which adds a lot of pressure and stress. Every year I get to this month and I start feeling overwhelmed by the work load, managing student behavior, and balancing all the other activities and obligations that I have in October. I also have a very strong inner critic that gets me down when I fall behind in grading or lessons don’t go as planned or my students act out. All the positive mental energy I had in August and September to tell my self that I’m doing my best, seems to gone in October and I severely criticize myself for making mistakes.
So, if you’re like me, you need a reminder this month that the job you’re doing is incredibly important and all you can do is to do the best you can. Maybe, also like me, you need a reminder of how to keep yourself mentally focused in the midst of the busyness. The following are a couple of things I need to remind myself as I look back and reflect on this month.
Focus on what you can control. I really needed this reminder this month and I think it’s is huge for teachers no matter where you teach. There’s so much we don’t have control over: the students we have, the parents of our students, class sizes, standardized testing, the obligations and requirements of our districts and our administration. Sometimes we allow these things to frustrate us so much that we lose sight of what we CAN do for our students. It’s not worth your mental energy to agonize over things you can’t change. Focus on your relationships with your students and how you engage and teach your students better each day. Focus on the things you do have control over.
When you make mistakes, silence your inner critic. In September I feel like I have laser focus on what needs to be done in my classroom and I’m very productive and energized when I’m at school. I’m so on top of everything that needs to get to done and remember to do all the things to keep myself organized. When October hits, I start to get more and more tired and I make more mistakes in the classroom and then I criticize myself. I tell myself that a good teacher wouldn’t forget to copy the quizzes for that day or make that grading mistake or forget to buy the supplies needed for the lab or get behind on grading. Of course, everyone forgets things and makes mistakes and I need to remember this. Once I realized that I was criticizing myself so much, I am learning how to stop myself from thinking these critical thoughts trying to use more positivity self talk. I need to remind myself that I don’t have to hold myself to an impossible standard.
Have a plan for bad days. As teachers we usually do a good job of planning and being proactive to avoid problematic situations, but we should also make plans for what we do when we have bad days as school. I’m not talking about how we handle discipline, I’m talking about how we handle ourselves on days when a kid has a melt down or you have a melt down or you have an unpleasant interaction with a colleague or on days when EVERYTHING SEEMS TO GO WRONG. How can we handle these days in a healthy way rather than criticizing ourselves for making a mistake or angrily venting to another colleague or going home and eating junk food? Maybe it’s sitting between classes and taking a few deep breaths or going to a quiet place and counting to ten or going for a walk after school. Do what works for you. I’m in my 5thyear of teaching and still learning how to do this. I think that anticipating and planning for bad days before they happen makes them less awful and coping with them in a healthy way keep can keep up from getting burnt out.
Give yourself and your students and your colleagues a fresh start each day. Try your hardest to forget about what happened yesterday and start each day a new. No matter how frustrated you get with the people or situations around you at work, don’t hold onto them. Start each day like it everyone gets a fresh start including yourself. Put on a smile (even if it’s just a fake smile) and focus on your students and being the best teacher you can be for them.
If you’re feeling anything like I have this month, I hope you know that you are doing a great job. Teaching can seem impossible sometimes, but you can do it. Don’t give up.
Teaching Science IRL 