Tonight's episode is about not being a perfect teacher.
Hello everybody. Tonight's episode is about not being a perfect teacher.
I'm going to start as very honest join me and we can chat about some of the things
that make us imperfect teacher. I'm going to try to be honest about all of my
imperfections because you know, what there are just some days where you just
don't feel like you've got it all together, and it happens to me probably
just as much as it happens to other people.
So, come on in, say hello. I mean sometimes behind me you may see
back here that it looks all neat and organized back here on the shelf, but
around anywhere where you don't see the camera pointed it's not so hot. It's
kind of a mess especially if I'm in the middle of working with something,
it's definitely not on the perfect side; that is for sure.
My question tonight for you is: What do you worry about and what are kind of
your insecurities when it comes to a teacher? Because, I'm diving deep tonight into
what mine are, so, feel free to think about what yours might be, and what you
do to compensate for them, because definitely I think that that's something
that we do all the time. I might just get started right away. I'm here I'm live,
I'm ready to go. Hello, hello everybody and welcome to
another episode of teaching With Inquiry live. Tonight, I am asking you to trust
me when I tell you that I am NOT a perfect teacher. I am far from a perfect
teacher. Sometimes, I worry because I come online every week or I have a blog or a
PPT store. The last thing I want is for people to look
and compare their everyday reality to generally what I share as my highlight
reel. I can't share some of the disappointments that I have because of
everyone knows there's confidentiality reasons and all of those other things.
I can't always share all of the not-so-great things that happen in my
classroom; the things that make me rethink why I even got into this
profession in the first place. All of those thoughts definitely crossed
through my mind, and I want to make sure that I put that out there. So, if
you're watching this you know that you are not alone in coming home at the end
of the day and feeling like it's all for nothing, and that you just want to throw
in the towel. Then, there are other days where you feel like you're a rock star.
It definitely happens and again, the whole idea is don't compare your
everyday to somebody's highlight reel. Today, I'm just going to kind of
open up the doors, and I'm gonna try to be as honest as I possibly
can about: What makes me not such a perfect teacher and why I just have had
to learn to be okay with it, because really we're not all perfect, and that's
totally okay. I'm gonna check off that prior thing there, and it will just be me.
If you've ever gone to my blog or you've thought why am I here, one of the
reasons I started my blog was primarily because I was feeling frustrated, and I
wanted to look for some ideas, but ultimately I couldn't necessarily find a
voice online that represented me. A lot of the voices that I found online in
terms of who is blogging six years ago, blogging was pretty huge back then, but a
lot of the voices in the teaching blogging world weren't necessarily
Canadian like me. They weren't teaching in a school system like mine,
and they weren't even using some of the same teaching gadgets
that we were being asked to use. I wanted to dig deep and do some of
the research and then share what I was learning with others in hopes that
perhaps there would be more voices out there. Thankfully, there are quite a
few more voices out there which is great. I've had to justify why I was
spending all of this extra time, people would request why they wanted the
information; they wanted things that I was talking about in my blog and that
led into Teacher pay Teachers. I needed to justify to my husband why I was
spending a ridiculous amount of time making all of my worksheets pretty with
interesting fonts, clipart and numbers. All of that is there. That's kind of
where it came from and it's where it is now and there's
Live show, and it goes into a podcast, and all of that primarily just because I
feels I can continue to use my advice to help make sure that other
teachers don't feel as though there's nobody that's speaking their
language. So, I'm not perfect. In fact, I definitely have days I'm thankful that
there is a glass of wine and a supportive husband at home that will
listen to me whine and complain all night long about all of the things that
frustrate me, that's for sure. I'm gonna cover five main things that make
me an imperfect teacher. I'm going to be brave, and come out there, and fully
admit all of those things. Before I get started, I want
you to think; What is one of the things that makes you an
imperfect teacher, and how do you compensate for that? What do you do
so that you can maybe get over that or do that? Share that in the comments and
let us know what are some little things that you use to compensate for maybe
something that makes you not such a perfect teacher. How do you unmask that
or get over that ? So, number 1, full honesty;
I can't spell. I'm actually not a great speller at all. This is one of the
things that has made me really self-conscious as a teacher because I'm
always worried that if I write anything down, and I spell something wrong that
I'm going to get that big judgement piece where somebody says, "Oh my God
she's is a teacher and she can't spell." That questioning of my ability to
teach simply hinged on the idea that spelling isn't something I'm good at, that in
order to be a great teacher that you also have to be good at spelling, and
math and science and everything else, that you need be awesome at all of those
things. Frankly, I'm just not. I'm not great at spellings, but whatever reason it's
not a strength of mine. That is something that I have had to get over
that fear of being judged if I do spell something wrong in my classroom, so, I
compensate. Some of the thing I do is I rewrite all of my anchor chart to make
sure that there's no spelling mistakes because chances are if I'm writing there
might be a spelling mistake and there's crossing off. I have my
phone with me in class so that if I do come across a word that I am
second-guessing myself that I can't spell, I look it up and I model for my students
that I am going to look it up because they need to see I'm not perfect. I'm
honest with them and saying, "I am looking it up," because I'm not sure, forget, I'm
thinking about it, and that's okay. It's okay to admit that you're not so great
at it. If parents and other teachers and other stuff, I just rely on
technology and thankfully the invention of spellcheck; is been absolute my lifesaver.
Using spellcheck has helped me because I can then write something, and I can have a
second set of computer eyes to help me get over that.
I had to come to the exceptions over the last ten years that's spelling and being
a good teacher don't necessarily mean that they are mutually
joined; that you can maybe not such a great speller and you can also be a good
teacher. I have to just own that that's an area that I have to work on.
And being completely honest it probably doesn't end with spelling,
if you asked my friend Sherry, she will tell you that I also really love capital letters.
I'll just ran and put them in pieces all the time which I'm working on there
with me, but I just need help. I can recognize that I need help.
I rely on friends and family to help me
edit my things and to work over some of the things before I publish them, or make
them. I know what my weakness it's in this area and I can compensate for it
And that's okay. Another thing that is a weakness for me as a teacher is I'm
forgetful; I forget everything. I wish I might be a elephant
but, I am a goldfish. This I think leads into the idea at why
maybe I don't use paper so much. One of my big issues I
don't really like having loose paper and that's because I think I'm constantly
misplacing. The most used feature on all of my devices is the search feature.
I owe a big thank-you to all of those software engineers at Google and every other
software engineer that designs search algorithms because I highly rely on your
skill set in order to help keep me organized. And because I'm forgetful,
I will often miss things and forget things, so, I have to really work on it; I have to
write myself notes, I have to ask my students to help me, I have to
acknowledge that this is an area that I'm working on, and I find when I
acknowledge these weak areas with others, then, they're absolutely willing to help
me out with them, and that's okay. Number 3,
of the things that I'm not so good at as a teacher, "Details". There are two
parts to this, number three and four are my issue with details. One I am NOT a
detail person; I am an idea person. I am somebody who loves to come up with ideas
all the time and think of different ways I can do it, but I don't really like to
get caught up in the ideas. If you think about in a classroom this
generally means that I don't really like to plan field trips because there's a
lot of paperwork involved. There's a lot of checking boxes and going through that
nitty-gritty all of the things that you need to do to get them from, "I have a
great idea, let's on a field trip," to actually getting kids there to go on a
field trip. I just have to really rely on the fact that I work with some
amazing co-workers where this is their strength; logistics is their strength.
If ideas are maybe where I thrive and coming up with ideas and different ways
of doing things, I can rely on the strength of my co-workers because
logistics is their thing. They can work on making sure that we can actually
go to the field trip, and I can find the trip and come up with an idea. So, relying
on the people around you to help compensate for some of those areas where
you might not be great, there's nothing to be ashamed of in that sense where you
might not be great at thing, but somebody else might be great at something you are
not so great at. That's okay, rely on the strength of others and find
the people that match their strengths are your weaknesses. It really helps
to get that ball rolling and make sure that the things you're not so good at in
your classroom maybe there's somebody else that you work with that can help
you with that area because, then, you're working as a team and you are working
well together. On the flipside, I also need all of the details. This has been
a huge barrier for me and this led to some major problems in
high school as a student for myself because I struggled a lot with math and
science primarily because, if I don't have all of the details, and I don't have
all of the information about a topic, I really struggle. I don't assume things very
well, I don't just take things at face value and I often find when I'm
presented with new information that I have to really learn about in a great
amount of detail. There is a benefit to this in the sense that when a new
concept comes in way, I have to really know it. Thankfully, high school in
math and science I had two really amazing math teachers that recognized
this for me and teach the regular lesson, and, then, come and sit with me and walk
me through step by step to make sure that I understood the entire process
because skipping steps just didn't work for me. I needed to see it from beginning to
end. Thankfully, now in math that helps me when I'm a teacher because I can see
what all of those steps might be so, then, I can then recognize where an error might
happen. So, it does help me as a teacher because I can recognize in other
students and what they might be needing in terms of working through different
problems. That every student might need a little different or might see things a
little bit differently. Because things didn't come so super easy to me
as a student, that gives me a lot of apathy when I work with other students.
It also allows me to understand that there's multiple ways to get to the same
conclusion; to get to that same answer. And that's okay because I definitely carry
those two teachers with me and my experiences that helps me to become a
better teacher. Number 5 is: I'm easily distracted.
See easily distracted, and it's okay. It's okay that I'm easily distracted.
Sometimes this means that I spent way too much time on things I don't need to
spend time on. For instance, I'm given an organizer from a Professional
Development session I could simply just use that organizer with my students
somebody else made and they gave it to me, but no, I remake the whole
organizer because it doesn't match the fonts that I've used in the classroom.
Not at all a good use of my time, but I get distracted in getting involved in
that kind of thing. If you were looking at my Instagram this week, I got
distracted with the prep in-terms of re-organizing my furniture in my classroom.
I didn't need to use my prep for that, but I did. I do actually like the way my
furniture is now so bonus, but there was the high chance that I would have moved
my furniture, not liked it, and then rearranged it back to its original
position, because I get distracted thinking, "Oh something's not working so
I need to do this and change things instead of just really focusing
on what I need to do. I spend way too much time on things that I don't need to
be doing because I'm not gonna give me a high bang of my buck. In all reality, my
students probably don't care that all of my works have the same font on them.
It's probably not a big deal to them, but I get distracted, and that's what I put
together, and it's not necessary. I need to maybe lower those expectations
and maybe focus my efforts on the things that do matter and kind of let go of
some of the things that don't, but I'm not sure if that's gonna change anytime
soon. I wish it would, but it probably will. Those are my five things that
make me an imperfect teacher. Over the last 10 years of teaching, I have just
had to learn to accept that I'm not perfect.
It's okay that I'm not perfect. It's okay that things don't work out all the time.
I fail a lot in classroom, I come up with an idea, I try it out it doesn't work.
I don't necessarily share all failures that I have in my classroom; maybe I
should share a few more. I don't share all my failures; I do share my successes.
I'm not going to put something out there that doesn't work for me, but chances are if
something has worked for me and I'm sharing it with you, it probably means
that there are 10 or 15 things that I have tried that didn't work out so
well. I definitely still those days which are tougher than
others where I feel like a complete failure as a teacher because nothing
worked out the way I needed to, but, thankfully, each day is a new day and days
like this happen where Friday was a rough day; it was rough for everybody, but today
I walked in, and all of my students opened their independent reading book
the first period and every single one of them was reading and on task before the
announcements even came on. Just that moment there, I was like, "Okay I can do
this." It's not always gonna be like Friday. And that's okay, you have those
moments there it makes it all worth it. You feel like you're on track, and,
then, you have those moments where everything goes off the rails, and
nothing works. And you pull out a math textbook and you give the questions from
the textbook because that's all the energy that you have for the day. And
that's okay because you don't have to be perfect a hundred percent of the time.
I hope that that makes you think a little bit tonight about giving yourself
a break and understanding that it's okay you're not perfect and it's okay if you
have bad days and it's okay things don't work out. The fact you show up and you
try and that you want to be a good teacher is probably the number one thing.
Thank you for joining me tonight, if you want to read the blog post that goes
along with tonight's talk, you can find that on www.madlylearning.com
For all of the show notes that correspond with this video including the
Podcast Replay, YouTube show and all other links associated with this
including the free reserve library of past upgrades, content upgrades, you
can find that at www.teachingwithinquiry.com I will catch you again next week.
Have a lovely week and I'll see you later.
Bye for now.
No comments:
Post a Comment