In a world that doesn’t value teachers or their role in developing a strong society, it can be hard to feel at home in this profession. As a result, teachers have a reputation for burning bright and burning out. For most of us, though, teaching is a career we enter for the long run. While teaching is the career from which I someday hope to retire, I would be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about alternatives. How are we supposed to be successful teachers when the world seems happy to sit back and watch us struggle?
Over the years, I’ve found that there are 3 things successful teachers don’t do.
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Successful Teachers Don’t Compete
My school district built a second high school a few years ago. On the one hand, this was a necessary change. Our current facility was overcrowded, and the district already had the land. On the other hand, the comparisons between buildings began immediately. Which school had the highest test scores? Won the most football games? Had the fewest discipline struggles?
At first, I became fixated on “beating” the other school. The narrative of school competition is compelling. There’s almost a familiar and nostalgic feeling to stories of crosstown rivalries.
However, after a few months of this, competition became unsustainable. It’s hard to maintain that kind of vitriol for any period of time. Instead, I began to look for collaborative opportunities.
In the end, my best collaborators were (and are) the women in my own hallway. By turning to them and focusing on the growth of our students, I’ve been so much happier and more fulfilled. The goal is to help students grow. Collaboration among teachers is one way to achieve that goal. Successful teachers keep collaboration in their hearts, not competition.
Successful Teachers Don’t Pursue Perfection
Maybe it’s because I’m a Virgo, but I tend to be a perfectionist. In college, I wanted all my folders to match my spiral notebooks.
In teaching, though, there’s always going to be a degree of the unpredictable. As teachers, we can anticipate some chaos and put strong procedures in place to keep the peace. However, we cannot prepare for every distraction. For example, my sophomores were so distracted in February when this rapper was released from prison. I could never have anticipated that distraction.
Pursuing perfection means we lose sight of our students’ humanity (and sometimes our own). Letting my students talk about the release of their favorite rapper was one small way of recognizing that humanity. Then, I used one of our procedures to recall their attention, and we moved on.
Humans aren’t perfect. We’re flawed and quirky and hilarious and emotional. Learning happens at the intersection of all those emotions, and successful teachers are always looking for that intersection.
Successful Teachers Don’t Become Martyrs
Teaching in the United States right now is a wild enterprise. Lots of loud folks with no teaching credentials have opinions about what happens in the classroom. The pandemic exposed every inequity in the system, and there really hasn’t been much movement to find healing, restorative solutions.
For those teachers committed to the classroom, there are times when all of this pressure feels overwhelming. It can also feel like you need to solve all of the systemic struggles involved in public education.
You can’t. (That’s one of the most pernicious myths in education.)
Some might say that I have a defeatist attitude. I don’t think so. I think I have an experienced perspective, one that has been tempered by time. My rose-colored glasses are gone.
The public education system is designed to consume teachers’ skills and talents. We are commodified and expected to shut up when the going gets tough. The system tries to sell us on the idea that we should sacrifice all of the time, but that narrative is part of how a broken system persists.
My days of martyrdom are long gone, and that doesn’t mean my work is done. No, I will still be here, doing the work, and I hope you will be here with me.
