This is a difficult time for all of us. Teachers have a magnified opportunity to be what we all signed up to be: an inspiration. Are you, teachers, ready to accept your responsibility?
Summers “Off”
As teachers, we catch a lot of flack for “having summers off” from those 9-5, 360ish-a-year-ers. Sure, enjoy the ribbing and your 12-month salary, (not just a 10-month salary stretched over 12 months), but at the root of this “advantage” we have is a necessity to perform at our highest level: the ability to step away and improve ourselves.
It is easy for any of us to get stuck in certain “grooves” of life; we fall into the routines that guide us through our day with as little active-thought as possible. We enter “survival mode” for a great percentage of our year while underneath it all, beyond the ease and convenience, we suffer both personally and professionally. This is as applicable to teachers as it is to bankers, doctors, or politicians - we become comforted by the routine thoughts and emotions that carry us to the point in our day when we can release ourselves to something much more enjoyable, but equally routine.
As a teacher, one is relied upon to the n-th degree, to the n-th times during each and every day. This isn’t service to other adults who are within their own grooves, simply looking to maintain the survival-until-enjoyment of their own lives, but service to children who, hopefully, have not yet acquired that draining and simplistic way of life. Our job, as teachers, beyond and despite the red-tape and testing requirements and proof-of-academic-progress, is to help children understand a control in their own lives that leads to constant enjoyment, achievement, and peace. Ask any GOOD teacher you know and they will admit that it’s beyond 8-4, it’s beyond 180, it’s beyond summers off.
I have told my students on a number of occasions of the nightmares that I have had of them the night before. It is never a nightmare of their momentary action, it is never a nightmare of me losing control in the classroom, but it is a nightmare of me losing it on them. I am not a “yeller”, I do well not raising my voice, so THIS is my nightmare - my reaching a point where I have lost control of myself in my professional environment. I would be lying if I said it didn’t happen, but, I have strategies to make sure my losing control doesn’t mean directing my frustrations at the children.
These moments as a teacher are the result of becoming stuck in that survival groove. These moments are running the same path over and over until you wear the path down so much it builds walls around you. These moments are living off of expectations for a general populace and understanding that it may not be applicable to your students but continuing to hold them to that expectation.
“Why aren’t they the way I want them to be?! Why aren’t they the way I NEED them to be?!”
Herein lies the problem. It shouldn’t be about where we, as teachers, want and need them to be. It should be about helping them understand where they are, and where they are going, and how to get there, (or, where they are, where they are going, and how NOT to get there while making corrections in order to go another direction).
(“Well what right of it is yours to decide if the direction they want to go is the wrong one?” Did 10 year-old you make the best decisions? Did wanting a pet dinosaur end up happening? They’re children, it’s our job, our sensitive, important, and influential job, to know the appropriate balance of leading and guiding, relax).
So what does this have to do with having summers off? As humans, we have a tendency to engage in survival mode...and this is potentially harmful and damaging to children. If I am in survival mode with Weirdly-spelled-first-name-with-a-rouge-x Johnson, then I am not giving him or her what he or she needs from his or her teacher. I have developed a mental and emotional expectation of my engagement with this child which is completely unfair. What great things might I be missing from this student because I am caught up in my own prejudice toward my own well-being? Sorry, my own PERCEIVED well-being. For in my ability to let go of those expectations, those struggles, and those “disappointments”, I am myself growing and providing for my environment a stronger, stabler, more peaceful me. This is the example we should be setting for the students in our classroom and this, realistically, requires a bit of a break from them.
Granted, I teach within the Montessori philosophy and I typically have children for a three-year cycle. This interaction with students may be different for teachers in a traditional setting who only have students for one year, but that creates a whole different set of dynamics. Granted, as a teacher, I’m starting to fall more in love with the thought of year-round school for the benefit of the younger students, (at least through 6th grade). Changing the structure of education begins with changing the structure of the teachers, of the guides, of the administration. Yes there is red tape, yes there is governmental requirement, yes there are a million excuses as to why one couldn’t, can’t, won’t, shouldn’t, and YES there is an attraction of falling into the path of least resistance, the survival groove, but there is nothing stopping each and every teacher from ascending to a higher sense of self that allows them to act above the routine while with students, and strive to bring back that reverence that was once shown to educators.
Do we really need summers off? If they are being used correctly to recharge the self, tie up loose ends, re-energize before heading into a new year, and unlearn some of those bad, adult habits that we carry with us, then absolutely.
Preparing Your Child for College: Not as far away as you think
This past weekend I drove up to Atlanta for my 10-year undergraduate reunion at Emory University. First, I'll admit it was good to see that all the money I paid to go there is being put to great use: campus looks amazing and continues to grow, but it maintains the same feel as it did when I attended.
Second, I want to acknowledge that incredible feeling of a place long-since visited. Every step I retraced around campus left me in the exact same heart-space as I'd left it in. It was a humbling experience and immediately sparked a mental time-travel and all the "what ifs" that come with growth and distance. It was a spectacular emotional journey.
Thirdly, and most importantly to you as parents, I want to share the realization that I came to upon this trip. When I decided to attend Emory, it was because I needed a challenge both academically and personally. High School required some work for me to over-achieve; had I taken it easy I would have done just fine, but that is not who I am, nor who I was, and so I worked hard. But the challenge wasn't there. I also knew that socially I needed to break out of my shell, my comfort. So, without knowing anyone else attending, and without ever visiting before my parents dropped me off, I headed south, hundreds of miles away from everything I knew, to force myself to grow up.
Herein lies my realization. For me, college was a GROWING UP experience, not a GROWING experience. I grew up privileged. I grew up protected. I grew up with a mother that, bless her heart, wanted to do everything to make our lives easier, even at the sacrifice of her own leisure or luxury. I was the type of child at home that would weasel out of responsibilities, or give minimal effort, unaware of the benefit to myself, and thus, the reason I really needed to contribute. When I went away to college, therefore, it was time for me to "grow up".
This was not a bad experience. This was what I recognized as a late-teen that I NEEDED to do. This decision is very difficult for a young adult to make for his/her self. My parents had prepared me as a person, but not to be a person. No fault of their own, they tried, I was a jerk.
My point is that college should be a "growing" experience, not a "growing up". Naturally some of this intertwines into both concepts, but IF your child, now almost a young adult, has already "grown up" - accepted responsibilities, understands accountability, personal care, collective contribution, independence, confidence, how to deal with failure - college can be their opportunity to grow that person that he/she is meant to become once independent in the world.
I also realized, I wouldn't change a single moment if it meant that today I would be someone other than the man I have grown into. Every variable led to me being in a position, and having the care to, share my experience and knowledge with children and parents in order to offer my viewpoint on what could be done to better create the next generation of citizens.
Whether college is in the future for your child or not, your responsibility as a parent, mentor, guardian, guide, is to help them "grow up" before the world makes them. With that accomplished, they will be able to spend their time simply growing into the adult man or woman they are meant to.