Written by Alright, so full disclosure, these past few months have not been great ones for me. The combination of some not-so-great personal things along with taking responsibility for too many great things left me feeling overwhelmed and really thinking that I bit off more than I can chew. Reading @lmiller’s blog and the quote from Seth Godin she references, “there’s a queue of urgent things, all justifiable, all requiring you and you alone to handle them. And so you do, pushing off the important in favor of the urgent” I feel more comfortable acknowledging my challenges. I tried to spend my Easter weekend tackling the urgent in order to favour the important – my Cohort21 action plan.
In my mind, I have had two pathways for my feelings and thoughts about my Cohort21 action plan and experience:
1) I had all these visions for an action plan, I barely reached any of them, therefore I was an awful candidate for my school to send to Cohort21 and I have failed as a representative.
2) Cohort21 allowed me to acknowledge and identify an area of growth for my classroom that extends to the entire school community, the school’s mission and my own teaching philosophy. It has served as the driving force behind every new thing I tried this year and every one of my interactions with students.
I have to admit I toggled between these two quite often over the past month or so. I had to remind myself that I have already done great things in and out of the classroom with students that were motivated by creating a culture of grit that I have been meeting goals towards my action plan, even if these weren’t things explicitly identified.
My action plan is centred around creating a culture of grit in students. When I reflect on my feelings towards #1 above, I need to remind myself that I need to be gritty first before I can expect it from students. I am truly passionate about building a grittier student body who can build skills and success through persevering through challenges, even if the outcome is not exactly as originally expected. Culminating my end of the beginning for my action plan is my current challenge. By persevering through this challenge I will build skills to help students persevere through their own challenges in my classroom and school community. This challenge will help me set realistic goals for meeting some of the larger action plan items in the future.
Action plan item #1:
“How might we create a culture of grit in the chemistry and math classroom?” – first by modelling grit, passion and perseverance in the classroom ourselves as teachers.
It’s been said that ‘teachers don’t teach grit…kids have grit already.’ This came to my mind reading your post because it seems that you’ve arrived at a place that drew out your own ‘grit’. Going through life being gritty all the time is an exhausting thing to have to do. However, realizing that it is more exhausting to not be gritty in a moment, to stand and make a change – or in your case – to shift your thinking is incredibly valuable. You’ve seized this moment, reframed your work, and are now moving forward. This is truly great learning! Way to go!
We’ve all had moments where we have a priority that just never quite makes it to the day’s ‘to-do’ list. Cohort 21 was that one for you for a while. But no more. You’ve hit the nail on the head with your new How Might We response. So now think about how will you tell your story to your students – who are probably living through their own narratives right now – so they can rest assured and be inspired by their teacher? Perhaps, use this blog to reflect on those ‘undocumented’ moments of grit by you and your students as well…
Don’t forget that as you embark on the end of the beginning, you now have a network of educators who can support you, a whole toolkit to go back to when you’re ready, and a blog to continue to reflect on your journey.
I’m looking forward to seeing you on the 21st for our final F2F,
garth.
@sregli –
Thank you for sharing your struggles and vulnerability. I have to admit that I am feeling very similiarly to you and am in a similar place. I have a draft blog post titled “failure” that I have been writing in my head for the past several weeks. So know that you are not alone. The very fact that you have seized upon an area that you are passionate about and wish to continue to wrestle with means that even though April 21st is almost here, it really is just the start of what Cohort 21 is all about — reshaping our mindset, rethinking and reflecting on our practice. You are clearly doing that, so in no way are you a poor representative for your school at Cohort 21!
With you in spirit,
Jen