How to Remain Positive in the Face of Challenges You Can’t Control

It is easy to become overwhelmed by educational challenges and issues that are out of your control. As a teacher, you will be faced with policies, procedures and circumstances that may frustrate you and make you feel ineffective.  Most teachers will tell you that it is not the students or the curriculum, but the bureaucratic demands that they must conform to that cause them the most grief.

At a district, state or national level, educational change is fraught with differing viewpoints about what is best for students.  Politicians tie educational reforms to any number of issues that are not even related to education.  School funding may be a pawn in a chess game for highway funding or tax incentives to entice corporate development. In this arena, change is not only difficult but out of the realm of control for many teachers, especially beginning teachers.

Other struggles come from environmental circumstances that seem out of our control. You may teach in a failing school or in a community with a lack of parental support.  Your students may live in poverty and families struggle to provide the basics such as food, shelter and medical care. Teachers are tasked with, and often assessed by, improving students test scores for children who often don’t even show up for school.

How do you maintain positivity in the face of very real struggles and under circumstances you cannot control?

They key to finding success despite the challenges we face is to understand what you can control, and do your best to be proactive in your responses to challenges.  Here are 6 ways you can respond positively to issues that are out of your control.

Build your own positive classroom ecosystem.

You may not like the top-down systematic policies that your school must adhere to, and you may wish for better environments for your students. But at the end of the day, your classroom is under your control.  You can make it a positive and safe place for students.  You can encourage and celebrate student growth and achievement. You can teach students life and social skills.  You can teach students the skills they need to learn and to succeed, and help them develop habits that lead to success.

Good teachers know that they teach far more than the curriculum they are given.  They help their students to be better people.  Building a supportive classroom community doesn’t take a lot of money and it can be accomplished within the boundaries of any required school initiatives.

Take opportunities to educate the public.

You don’t have to be a lobbyist to help to inform people about the issues that educators face. Your family and friends will ask about school.  A local school issue will be a topic of discussion at the grocery store or at the community pool. You may even be invited to a school board meeting to share a program you have participated in.  Each of these is an opportunity to be frank and honest, sharing your struggles and your ideas about what schools and teachers really need.

Most educational reforms are well -meant.  Lack of experience and knowledge by those in power leads to policies that don’t work.  You can inform others by telling of your experiences in a non-judgmental, factual way.  Share what has worked for you and what you believe students need.  All educational reforms need to be made with the input of teachers.  You may only play a small part in providing that input, but if every teacher did this, it would make an impact.

Be careful about the negative messages you put into the world.

In many societies, teachers are both revered and well paid. They are treated as professionals and high respected.  This is often not the case in the U.S. today, where teacher bashing has become common place.

If teachers want to be respected, they need to be respectable.  Most teachers are consummate professionals.  However, sometimes the messages teachers put into the world are less professional.

For example, Facebook is full of memes with countdowns to the number of days left before a school break.  The subtle message to students, parents and the entire community is “my job is so bad that I can’t wait for the next 21 days until summer break.”   Another Facebook meme rejoices, “Off for three months, too bad for the rest of you suckahs…”  We all enjoy a funny post, but consider the underlying message before you post.

Don’t let assessments be your only focus.

There is a lot of pressure today to achieve progress on standardized tests. Many teachers are also required to do weekly probes and regular unit assessments.  Sometimes these assessments are not even directly tied to the curriculum you are required to teach. Yet when students don’t achieve the required scores, both teachers and students are demoralized.

Keep in mind that an assessment is one piece of data, one picture of one moment in time.  Be sure to keep other forms of data that show student progress.  Multiple data points will make a stronger case for student learning.

Help students stay motivated and positive by explaining what the test scores mean.  For example, standardized tests do a much better job of showing district growth than they do showing individual growth. Show students and parents how they are making progress by sharing their work.

Keep parents informed and engaged. 

The key to good parental interactions is to keep parents informed and engaged. Even if parents seem disconnected, keep trying.  Use any means necessary including your schools’ parent portal and on-line grading system, newsletters, a classroom web page and good old-fashioned notes home. Share your units, your objectives, your goals for the students and especially, your students’ wins. One positive phone call home can sometimes turn around an unmotivated or under performing student.

Know that you have more power than you think in affecting the lives of your students.

This is the realization that keeps many teachers going.  You may not be able to change the system, but you can help this child. You may not be able to provide a safe environment in a troubled neighborhood, but you can provide a safe environment in your classroom.  You may not be able to help a student learn everything, but you can help them learn important things that have the power to change their lives.

It is helpful to know that teaching struggles are real and can be overwhelming.  We also think it is helpful to know that if you remain focused on the things under your control, you can ultimately affect positive results.

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