Educators in our schools today have more on their plates than ever before. There are new(ish) standards and emerging competencies, new methods, mandates, programs, and technology that they are expected to implement, often without a clear understanding of how it fits together to meet the wide range of needs of all of their students. As a result, you have teachers that are burned out and frustrated because they aren’t having the impact that they desire.  

I came across this post on Facebook where Amber Lynn, a middle school teacher, details what it’s like to be a teacher- here are just a few of the examples she highlights. I get anxiety just reading it:

Teacher coaches: Students are experiencing an all-time level of trauma. Form relationships with all students and make connections every day.

SRSS: Make sure to incorporate ELA and math into your lesson plan daily, so we can boost our scores for data.

IEP: Implement these modifications and accommodations for these students every hour. Document it.

504: You are legally bound to adhering to these accommodations for these students. Document it.

Pinterest: Every teacher in the universe has a cooler and craftier idea and classroom than you.

Facebook: Omg. Did you hear about what happened in *insert teacher here* class?! Don’t they even watch them? It’s their job! How did (s)he miss that?! Yeah, and I heard…

This post goes on to detail more and more expectations, assumptions, and emotions that teachers experience as they work so hard to do what is right, and meet everyone’s expectations with their kids every day! I see it often (and hear it from my husband) but it broke my heart to read it all together- Definitely worth reading.

The Impact of Adding More

The many demands and lack of coherence and support can leave teachers feeling ineffective and burned out. All these demands that the teacher shares above come as a result of our systems trying to meet the range of academic, emotional, and behavioral needs of the students that walk in their doors. We have SEL, MTSS, RTI, UDL, PBL and so many other programs that are well-intentioned but as a very hard working and innovative teacher shared recently, I want to meet all the district expectations and provide the best education possible for all of my students but I am struggling to fit all of these “seemingly disparate” programs and mandates together in my classroom.

Learning is a Process, Not an Event

Margaret Wheatley reminds us that, “Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful.” Even with the best of intentions, we can miss the mark if we don’t stop and pause to reflect. This was made clear to me as I was talking to a teacher who had just been in a 3-hour workshop learning a lot of new content and he shared, I really like these ideas and I’m totally invested but after 3 hours of new information I am so overwhelmed.

And then he stopped and wondered aloud, is this what our students feel like?” YES!

If we just keep adding more without time to process what fits together, what can be taken out, what is repetitive, what is missing, what “it” means, we will burn out teachers, and fail to have the impact that we want to have on our students. Teachers, like all learners, need time to process and make sense of all the new initiatives and mandates to figure out how to implement them in their classrooms.  

Unfortunately, this is common human behavior as the pressure increases- we push harder and faster while instead, we should slow down as highlighted in the article Reflecting on Work Improves Job Performance, “But new research demonstrates the value of reflection in helping people do a better job. A working paper by Francesca Gino and Gary Pisano of Harvard Business School, Giada Di Stefano of HEC Paris, and Bradley Staats of the University of North Carolina shows that reflecting on what you’ve done teaches you to do it better next time. The researchers did a series of studies, all showing that reflection boosts performance. “Now more than ever we seem to be living lives where we’re busy and overworked, and our research shows that if we’d take some time out for reflection, we might be better off.” 

Creating the Time to Process

I have had the opportunity to be a part of a few different district-wide professional learning days recently and those districts who have been pushing hard and providing a lot of new information realized- likely because they are listening and empathizing with teachers that they needed to slow down and give their teacher time to process. Tustin Unified provided a full day for teachers to do WHAT THEY NEEDED and called it a Process Day. They provided options, not mandates, and time to reflect, process, and decompress. 

MiddleTown City School District, similarly, provided the day for teachers to gather, collaborate and work together based on their needs and goals. You might be thinking- as I did at first- they are just going everyone do whatever they want all day. YES!  And as a result, of being celebrated, trusted and able to choose what they needed to work on, they did. We visited teachers planning challenge based units, some teams were working on ISTE certification, others were collaborating in grade-level teams, and others were in choice workshops getting what they wanted or needed.

If you don’t have a whole day, consider taking a staff meeting, team time, and afternoon to honor what teachers need and give them time to process all that is coming their way. We often try to cram it all in to say we have considered it but if those who are supposed to learn it and use the new information in new ways aren’t truly tasking time to learn, process, and use the new information, maybe it’s time to slow down to have the impact we desire.