Ever feel like a fraud?

I admit I leave our sessions at Cohort 21 energized with enthusiasm for all that I am going to do, to be the teacher I can be…no… am and then the days wear on and things get in the way. I looked at my “action plan” or statement

“How might we enable and build a culture of independence? (Developing risk taking and problem solving in ways that don’t stop with me)”

and wonder how on earth I am going to get where I am going if there is still such a long way to go. All of the enthusiasm and …I feel like I am going nowhere slowly…See Sisyphus…

 

Last night I ran into a colleague who I adore, we share many ideas and celebrate many of the same things in our practice. I shared my feelings of frustration with my somewhat dismal pushes toward fostering independence, feeling deflated about progress and I wondered aloud if I was I was really the right choice for this opportunity (I am loving it and feeling it will ultimately be transformative but I’m so not there yet), and left our informal chat with two things pulled to the forefront of my mind.

1)I’ve got to start with what I have and the circumstances that are present. I was feeling frustration about my students and the amount of push back I get when they are asked to explore open ended tasks and how they long for standard, pencil to paper, answer the questions in order in set order, approach that is not me and will never be. But that is where some come from and I must meet them there and they will come to find comfort in the less teacher directed…eventually….right!? She also noted that I will deliver my students to a teacher who loves PYP and I could find a new collaborator if I looked. If nothing else they will come to him with more independence as a result of my efforts.

2) That this journey doesn’t end at the end of this school year, it begins a trajectory that is just plotting a course and for me and I think many of us, a course that will begin each school with each new group of students. But each time it will get easier to navigate with many lessons learned along the way.

 

That said I was still feeling a little lost…

and by sheer luck I came across a link to an article, in a comment by Justin Medved, on post by Miriam John trying to ignore her boulder of expectations that spoke to me as someone with their own “boulder” Read Myriam’s Post here

 

My solution to my “problem” of a lack of progress was to reorganize refocus and try again. But as the author states:

“The illusion of making progress in education, the continuous re-evaluating, revising, and reorganizing of educational principles and practices, and the use of flawed data to direct our course of action, are all part of a grand illusion that is producing much “confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.”

well yes! Instead I will do more of what I feel is meaningful, what inspires me, and ultimately the kind of less structured moments that foster the kind of independence I am working on fostering.

So in other words I should just keep going.

Teaching By Doing Something Meaningful