Your Best Self Archives - Page 23 of 26 - Inspired Together Teachers

5 Things Every Teacher Should Do During a School Break

December 21, 2018 by Inspired Together Teachers Leave a Comment

You’ve worked hard this year and are probably exhausted! It’s break time and you have earned a well-deserved rest. No one will complain in you stay in your PJ’s, drink hot chocolate and watch Netflix all day.

Once you get some extra sleep, you may be inclined to tackle something more. Here are our suggestions for 5 things every teacher should do during a school break:

Read a book for pleasure.

Grab that thriller that your friends have been talking about and indulge in some fun reading. It is both a pleasurable way to spend an afternoon and a professional obligation. Would you enroll your child in a tennis class taught by someone who doesn’t play tennis? Would you want your child to be taught reading by a teacher who never reads? Can you encourage a student to be a life-long learner if you yourself never open a book?

Spend time with your friends.

The time challenges of being a teacher often mean that you don’t have a lot of evenings and weekends for friends. Take this opportunity to meet friends for lunch, or plan an evening together. It will feel good to reconnect.

Spend time with your family.

The holidays offer many opportunities for family time. Relish it. Engage in conversations with your loved ones. Attend the holiday gathering at your aunt’s house. Have some laughs with your cousins. Be present and enjoy the moments. Some day you will look back on these times with great pleasure.

Rediscover a hobby.

In your busy teaching weeks, you often don’t have a lot of time for your favorite pleasurable activities. Pick up that guitar or chess set. Make some jewelry or do a craft project. Get outside and go for a walk or go skiing. Bake a cake or a new recipe you’ve wanted to try. Our hobbies are one way to be good to ourselves. By this time in the school year, our emotional buckets are often drained. Hobbies are one way to fill them back up again.

Plan the year ahead.

We aren’t talking about resolutions here, we are talking about thinking about what you want your life to be like in the next year and making plans. This includes your professional life and goals, but also plans for other areas of your life such as family, friends, home, finances and other personal goals. We love the quote from Michael Gerber:

With no clear picture of how you wish your life to be, how on earth are you going to live it?

How do you wish to live in the next year? We hope that this break will offer you time to relax, renew and plan good things for the new year.

Our best,

Are You Swimming Like a Duck?

August 29, 2018 by Inspired Together Teachers Leave a Comment

Do you see experienced teachers who are getting everything done and doing all the right things? Their classroom looks organized, their students are well behaved and they are on top of the curriculum. They appear calm and in control.

They look like peaceful ducks swimming along contentedly in a pond.

Do you ever wonder how they do it all? Do you feel just a little bit jealous?

Like the peaceful duck swimming on the pond, ease is often an illusion.

Most teachers are swimming like ducks in that even though it may appear to be all calm and controlled, they are actually working hard and sometimes you can’t see the effort. Under the calm waters, those legs are paddling furiously!

It reminds us of something else that is famously hidden.

Take a look at these icebergs. Impressive, aren’t they?

What you don’t see when you look at an iceberg is the the depth of the iceberg below the water.

What you see is literally, the tip of the iceberg.

With the duck, the iceberg, and teachers, there is always more to the story. There are things you don’t see or don’t understand because you don’t always have the complete picture.

Don’t be quick to judge yourself against someone else. Comparison is the thief of joy.

You don’t know what goes on underneath the facade that you see. There is more to someone than what may first appear.

As you navigate the landscape of your school, consider that you don’t always have the big picture. You won’t always understand the reasons for behaviors, or why things are done the way they are done.

Ask. Listen. Learn.

And know that if you are swimming like a duck, you are in good company.

Our best,

5 Day Teacher Bootcamp: Boost Your Inner Warrior!

June 12, 2018 by Inspired Together Teachers Leave a Comment

We have something new and fun! We have created a FREE 5 day teacher bootcamp that will help you build your inner strength and confidence as a teacher. Inner strength is vital for career stamina and personal satisfaction- join us and develop the personal strength you need to thrive as a teacher.

Each day for five days you will get an e-mail from us. In the e-mail you will find a short activity, exercise or video. You know the importance of working out your body- here’s a chance to work out, strengthen and rejuvenate your inner stamina.

The exercises can be just for your eyes, but if you want to share, we will post a question each day on our Facebook page at Thriving Young Teachers and you can answer the question and interact with others. We love the interaction on our Facebook page and we will join in too!

Just fill out the form below and we will get you added to the list.

The bootcamp starts on Monday June 18th. In the meantime, if you are new to our e-mail list, you will get some welcoming e-mails and some free goodies from us.

We hope to see you soon!

What to Do When You Are Overwhelmed: 6 Steps To Help You Get Back in Control

January 30, 2018 by Inspired Together Teachers 2 Comments

It happens to every teacher- you have too much to do and are struggling with how to get it all done. Some days you become so paralyzed that you are unable to choose what to do next and the next thing you know you’re surfing Facebook and watching kid president videos.

Procrastination is a common sign of overwhelm. Feelings of defeat and despair can show up too, as any new teacher who has spent a lunch hour crying in the car can attest.

How do you take action when you are so overwhelmed that you can’t focus? How do you choose from the many projects and goals you want and need to accomplish?

Here are 6 steps to take when you feel overwhelmed:

Stay in the moment.

When you are overwhelmed you are often living in the future. For example, conferences are coming up and you need to finish grades, you need to order the supplies for the science unit, and you need to prepare comments for an upcoming IEP meeting. The students will be in your room in five minutes. Before you know it, you are hyperventilating.

Take a breath and return to the moment. What do you need to do right now?

Overwhelm is often about a false timeline. Our heads tell us everything must be done right this minute. Ask yourself, what time constraints do I believe exist? Which deadlines are real and which are self-imposed?

2. Make a list.

Sometimes it helps to make list of everything you need to do. This is especially true if your worries keep you up at night.

Grab all those sticky notes and small pieces of paper where you have jotted notes and put them on one master list. This will help by getting things off your mind and onto paper and lessen the chance that you will forget.

Once your list is written down, prioritize the “need to-do” versus the “should do” items on the list. We all have a list of things it would be nice to do or that we would like to do. Those things can stay on the list, but they have a lower priority than the things that you must do. Turning in grades is a priority, color coding, labeling and alphabetizing your binders is a “nice to-do” item. Those can wait.

Assign due dates to priorities. Then schedule them into your planning periods.

If you have many large projects, break them down into smaller steps. It also helps to chunk like items together, for example making all the phone calls after school or gathering all the materials you need in the morning before school.

If you get overwhelmed by the enormity of your master to-do list, the next step is for you.

3. Take action on one small thing.

Even baby steps will help to thwart inertia. Just pick one small thing and do it. Then pick another small thing and do that. If you keep doing small things, eventually you will finish projects.

Go ahead and check off things once you have finished them; it will make you feel accomplished and let you see your progress!

4. Clear some space.

If your physical space is out of control, clearing some space can help you focus. Pick a corner of your desk and clear it off. Return things to their proper place. Toss the broken pens.

If your classroom is a mess, enlist your students in helping you pick it up. Together you can accomplish a lot of cleaning and organization in a few minutes. Look around at things that need to be cleaned up or organized and give each student one small thing to do.

Clearing your space often helps to clear your mind and make you feel better.

5. Consider outsourcing some of your tasks.

Many of us fall into the trap of believing that we, personally, have to do everything. In reality, you can probably outsource some of the things on your to-do list. Which items would be better done by someone else? Could you enlist the help of a classroom associate or a parent volunteer? Could another teacher, school counselor, or principal help you with a student challenge you are facing? Could you enlist students to do more of the routine classroom chores?

A bulletin board designed and put up by students might not be as polished as the one you were planning, but the students will have ownership and may even prefer their bulletin board to yours.

6. Understand that you are doing the best you can.

We’ve all worried that we are not good enough or that we don’t have what it takes. We struggle because we have a lack of experience, knowledge or skill.

In the beginning, you won’t have the ability to handle everything smoothly. You won’t have everything figured out ahead of time.

It’s okay. We build strength and skill by being in the game and by taking action. We gain knowledge, experience and skill as a teacher by doing the job, not by thinking about it or wishing for it or obsessively worrying. Our strength comes after we do things.

You are good enough. You will get better. Believe it because it is true.

We understand the drive for growth and the pull of perfection. However, you will feel less overwhelmed when you realize that we don’t go into something strong and talented, we gain strength and talent by doing, trying, and learning.

In the busy schools and classrooms of today, you are bound to feel overwhelmed from time-to-time. We hope that you can use some of these strategies to feel less burdened and more in control.

Good luck!

Do you feel overwhelmed ? What do you do to get yourself back on track and stay productive? We would love to hear your ideas in the comments below.

Huddled Masses: How A Teacher Can be a Beacon of Hope For Students

January 16, 2018 by Inspired Together Teachers 4 Comments

This week we have a guest post written by 4th grade teacher Colin Rust. Colin is also one of the Thriving Young Teachers mentors. One of Colin’s gifts is building a strong classroom community. He finds the strengths of each student and helps students work together to support each other. You will understand why when you read his inspiring post.

Huddled Masses: How A Teacher Can be a Beacon of Hope For Students

by Colin Rust.

Each year as a part of our ELA Unit my fourth graders explore the ever invigorating topic of immigration. No sarcasm here, I promise. I find the learning of a horde of people moving very exciting. The idea that at one time millions of people decided to pack up everything they owned, or what would fit in a small backpack, and move halfway across the globe on a whim of a dream, is an adventure of epic proportions. Along with immigration we discuss a famous landmark that has a close link to these journeys: The Statue of Liberty.

This tall, beautiful symbol of hope holds a great deal of meaning to many immigrants both past and present. She stands for hope, for freedom, and for dreams that wouldn’t have come true if some have never made it to America. She holds a blazing torch which ushers souls into the harbor. The students learn a great deal about this gargantuan guide through research and readings; however, this year it wasn’t the seven spikes on her crown that peaked my interest. It wasn’t the fact that she is resting one of her feet, but it was the little poem that is screwed into the base of this beacon of hope.

The poem, entitled ‘The New Colossus’ was written by Emma Lazarus in 1883 as part of a fundraising campaign by the assemblers of the statue, basically the epitome of the “write the best short story” competitions. Lazarus compares the new shining statue to The Colossus of Rhodes, an Ancient Greek statue that welcomes sailors into the city of Rhodes. That’s all fine and dandy but this isn’t a bloomin’ history post, so move on Rust, move on. Anyway she wrote this poem and this poem has a lot to say, and its meaning goes far beyond immigration.

The poem itself is multiple stanzas long, but I will focus on the most famous part:

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

This little bit of this poem, this sonnet, really spoke to me as a teacher. Think about this. Each year a new ship of fourth grade immigrants leave their homelands and venture to the great unknown. We, as teachers, should be their Lady Liberty (or Liberty Lad, if you will), welcoming them with open arms. Our torches blazing the way to their hopes and dreams.

As educators we need to welcome this group. We need to accept them all as they are. Sure are they all shining, first class voyagers? No. Some come to you a little battered and yes, broken. However as an educator, as a teacher, you have a duty to accept those poor, those tired, and those huddled masses.

Some of these kiddos are coming to you, looking to you as a beacon of hope, a fresh start, a living breathing dream. It is a huge disservice to them to look down upon them based on hearsay from others in the building. I know we all dread “those kids”, the kids that seem to walk the halls with a Google Maps pin on their head. A pin that literally shouts,”Hey! This is that kid that people were talking about!” My challenge every year is to try not to listen to what others say about students. Yes, I welcome any helpful advice, but as far as I’m concerned I’ll form my own opinions after getting to know them.

These “huddled masses” have been assigned me as their teacher. Just as the statue didn’t get a choice to say who floated passed her, we don’t get a choice in which students we get each year. However, instead of throwing a fit about it, or lamenting in the fact that you “got the hard class again”, I believe you need to take the opportunity and look at your students and ask yourself: “What do these students need from me?” How can you take your wretched refuse and turn them into shining examples of upstanding citizens of your classroom community? You might be the best thing for “that kid.” Be the teacher to wash clean that student’s reputation. Be the teacher that will change that student’s life.

And, hey, I’m not perfect. In fact this year I found myself in the same predicament. I had a student who I couldn’t grasp. I couldn’t seem to get a handle on what to do to help this child. Was this the best fit? Would this student thrive somewhere else? And the biggest question, why me? These questions may not have definite answers, but if I put them in the golden light of the New Colossus’ torch, some answers seem to appear. I can do something for this student. I can make a difference. I may not know why I was chosen, maybe it was simply that my roster was short, or maybe I was meant to change this student’s fate.

This year I had to come face to face with that sonnet, pull myself up by my gigantic sea foam toga, and do my best for this student, I needed to give them a chance. And isn’t that what we all want as immigrants coming to a land? Give them a chance. It’s free. It’s easy. It could change a life. Or maybe more.

Colin Rust is a 4th grade teacher at Brookdale Elementary School in Naperville, Illinois.

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