Twice as long, half as bright. (flickr/gfpeck)
This is the seventh written response to the TFA pre-institute work (responses 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). This reflection is on “working relentlessly.”
So I have now absorbed all of the Teach for America pre-institute reading materials. These assignments have inspired, stimulated, and at times filled me with dread about the fact I’ll be standing in front of several classrooms of students come August. Fortunately, nestled in the final chapter of Teaching as Leadership, are some concrete and calming suggestions for how to be effective without burning out like a Roman candle.
I was both relieved an amused to find this advice at the end of the reading course, because saving it for the dénouement, after everything that came before, reinforces what journalist Dana Goldstein calls the “miracle ideology” in education reform. She writes that some “education reformers, including Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, really do seem to believe that great teachers “—a mentality that creates all kinds of policy sticking points when trying to get teachers unions to adopt policies like merit pay. It’s neither fair, nor a reasonable labor demand, to expect that every teacher perform miracles every day.
Now, I do believe that it will take a significant amount of self-sacrifice to move up the learning curve in the next year or two to gain my footing as a teacher. I’ve “worked relentlessly” before—in college and professionally—but I’ve never spent several months in advance thinking about what “relentless” means. In the abstract, it can be a little overwhelming.
Which is why it was a relief to encounter some level-headed advice in the final chapter of Steven Farr’s text that would have been worth heeding years ago when I was pushing myself to work all the time in college. The basic principle is that you have to manage energy rather than time. I can tell from personal experience that while I may understand this at face value, I may have difficulty internalizing it. Struggling a few years ago to find enough hours in the day (and the night) to work on the student magazine I edited, study for classes, write an undergraduate thesis, and socialize with my peers, a friend with a similar work ethic and heavier class load looked at me when I said that felt like I had to be working constantly and said “parties are important too.”
Now, parties per se may not be as important anymore, but the point remains: to be effective in the classroom, you have to attend to your own physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health, as Farr explains. After hundreds of pages, I was still looking warily at the word “relentless,” and then he offered this definition from a corps member:
Working relentlessly means that you take ownership of the difficult process that is teaching to close the achievement gap, and a part of that is understanding that you hard work is measured in results, not hours on the clock.
The friend with the sage advice about taking time to relax and socialize also worked with me on the college magazine, and while we didn’t always manage the project very well, we certainly poured a lot of time and energy into it. For six of my eight undergraduate semesters, I arranged my class and homework schedule so that I could be at magazine production every Tuesday night from 7pm until 3am. Two major components of that work sustained many members of the staff: the group energy and collaboration that went into making the magazine, and the resulting sense of pride and accomplishment we felt later in the week as fellow students opened up the latest issue to read while eating their lunch in the dining hall. But as a college student, I was still learning to manage time and energy, and when I didn’t sleep or work efficiently on my homework in order to focus on magazine production, arguments broke out, I made editorial mistakes and failed to listen to other staffers, and simply wasn’t as effective at the job I had to do.
During that time, I tended to carry folded pieces of paper in my pocket with messy to-do lists on them. I’m still a list-maker and always looking for the most effective way to generate lists (be they paper or digital), prioritize them, and ensure that I accomplish what’s on them. During a classroom observation a few weeks ago at a KIPP school, I noticed a weekly list behind an English teacher’s desk reminding him of basic responsibilities for assignments, grading, and reporting assessment results to his principal. In the midst of hectic days, it occurred to me that a simple reminder of all the core tasks he had to accomplish could seem daunting, but more importantly, it provided a simple roadmap through was could easily become chaos.
I’m going to need a lot of lists to keep myself on pace to teach well and to do my own homework to meet certification requirements. But if I’m really going to use checklists to be effective, I’ve got to include investing time in my own physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health. That might mean daily exercise, reading, or even video games. But from where I sit at the moment, putting those things on the lists and taking them seriously will help ensure that I don’t flame out and fail my students.