Teaching With Heart  S. 4 Ep. 51

If you’re teaching with heart, you’re bound to feel strong emotions. Listen to this episode to learn how to stay heart centered while keeping your emotions in balance.

Show notes:

Episode Summary:

When you’re teaching with heart, you are bound to get burned. You’re also bound to feel deep pride, satisfaction, and joy. How do you teach with heart and keep your emotions in check? In this episode, we explore what happens when heart centered teachers experience strong emotions and steps to take to help you balance those strong emotions.

In this episode:

The following show notes are a summary of the podcast. To hear the entire discussion including the examples and stories, please listen to the podcast episode.

Introduction:

We’re in a helping profession, which means we may feel emotions more deeply than those in other careers.

Every educator we know will tell you that they put their heart into their job everyday. Not only do teachers invest their time and energy into their jobs, they make a personal investment- sharing their emotions and helping their students process their big emotions.

You feel emotions strongly because of the passion you bring to the job, but also because of the challenges you face. You also invest in your students emotionally.

What a gift and responsibility it is to impact so many students daily. It’s no wonder we can run the gamut of emotions.

Today we’re going to explore a few of the emotional extremes that teachers feel daily, hourly and sometimes even by the minute. We are sure you can relate to the extremes of pride and disappointment, hope and fear, connection and isolation, and love and heartbreak.

As we explore these extreme emotions, we’ll also share some ways to navigate our emotions in order to maintain a sense of balance for ourselves.

Emotional Extreme #1: Pride and Disappointment

It is possible to feel both pride and disappointment as a teacher.

When our students succeed academically, whether they master a skill, or when we witness an a-ha moment, we sometimes swell with pride to the point we feel like we may burst.

Who doesn’t love to see the wins, the progress, the content or skill growth students make?

However, we can also feel disappointment if a student works hard to achieve a goal and then falls short. We all know that sinking feeling of watching a student realize that they failed a high stakes test or failed to meet an expectation they were sure they would meet. Our heart hurts with them.

We can also feel pride and disappointment in ourselves and our impact in the classroom. We feel pride when a group of students achieves something that they didn’t think possible and we know that we played a part in getting them there.

Those are the days when we love our jobs and love knowing that we are making an impact!

We can also feel disappointed in our impact when a student, or group of students, doesn’t seem to be progressing despite our best efforts.

There are many other scenarios daily that set teachers up to feel either pride or disappointment. Consider your classroom’s commitment to the community, the impact of a lesson plan you poured your heart and soul into, awards and recognitions, and student feedback. All of these have the possibility to stir up emotions of pride or disappointment.

Emotional Extreme #2: Hope and Fear

Hope and fear are another set of emotional extremes that teachers can vacillate between or feel simultaneously.

As a group, teachers are hopeful people. If teachers lacked hope, there wouldn’t be much point in teaching the students that enter into their classrooms. Teachers derive hope from the belief that the efforts they make each day will make a positive impact on the students they teach and society as a whole.

Each year brings a new promise and we are hopeful for the success and well-being of each of our students and the classroom community as a whole. We hope that we will have supportive parents, like-minded colleagues, supportive administrators, and that we will be appreciated for their efforts. There is so much to be hopefully for. Teaching, unlike many other professions, begins with a fresh start each August and that causes us to feel renewed hope each year.

However, fear can accompany that hope, lurking in the background. We fear that we will not be able to reach some of the tough students. We fear the pressures that society puts on teachers, and in some cases we may fear for our physical or psychological safety.

Teachers are continually impacted by policy changes beyond their control and we fear the implications, as we are on the front line of the implementation and can see devastation that others may not see.

Under all of this pressure, we can be afraid of our own personal burnout or watching our colleagues burnout.

Sometimes, it can be helpful to explicitly list our hopes and our fears. Under each of the hopes and fears, list a few indicators that would let you know if what you are hoping for or what you are fearing are becoming a reality. For example, if you fear that your school may become an unhealthy place to work, write down indicators that would let you know that it is unhealthy. Then watch your list for any red flags that indicate your fears are coming true. Or if you hope to build healthy relationships with your new grade-level teaching team this year, write down exactly what that would look like. Then, once you have met those indicators, you will know that your hope has become a reality.

There is a lot of power in writing things down so you can keep them in the front of your mind.

Emotional Extreme #3: Connection and Isolation

Teachers feel connected when they are part of a community with a shared purpose. That might be a content team, a grade level team, your PLC, a district faculty, or maybe a sense of community with a shared purpose that occurs with your students in your classroom. Wherever that collaborative environment occurs, that is where you can feel connected in your work.

You have all likely felt this sense of community. We see it when teachers talk about “my team”, or “our school”.

Teachers have a special bond that connects them across time and space. The more teachers have a space and opportunity for communication, collaboration and a feeling of empowerment, the more they will feel connected.

Have you ever been to a “teacher party?”  You run into another teacher and almost instantly start talking about school or your students or issues that affect educators. It is like we can’t help it- we have found our people in the room!

On the other hand, teachers can also feel extremely isolated. In fact, teaching is one of the most isolating professions. Teachers are in rooms, often with the door shut, away from other professionals for the majority of their day. Unlike people in other professions who can walk next door to their colleague’s office or cubicle as their leisure throughout the day, teachers are limited in their freedom and ability to communicate with colleagues.

In order to feel more connected, and less isolated, take steps to build connections with other teachers. Schedule a fun outside-of-work event like attending a trivia night or pottery painting class with your colleagues. Host a fiction book club in your classroom one day after school or find another way to increase your connection with colleagues and to decrease those feelings of isolation.

It takes some work, and you probably think you don’t have time for those kinds of social things, but those opportunities will help you stay engaged and do a good job of making your work easier as you realize that you are not alone. It is good for your mental health to engage with a supportive community.

Emotional Extreme #4: Love and Heartbreak

Finally, it is common for teachers to feel the extreme emotions of love and heartbreak.

One of the most rewarding aspects of being a teacher is the love we feel for our students.

We see this example, sadly, in the case of school shootings. Teachers readily and willingly will put the lives of their students in their own hands and sacrifice for them. You don’t do that unless there is love there.

The bonds we feel with our students are not easily broken and they transcend time and space. The memories of our students can warm our hearts for years.

You may also feel love for the profession of teaching. Though it can be difficult work, you may find yourself overwhelmed at times by how grateful you are to be doing meaningful work that you love. You have the privilege of watching lots of young people learn and grow and knowing that you nurtured a part of that growth…year after year.  You are etched in their memories and they in yours.

A quote by author Scott Hayden summarizes this well, “Teachers have three loves: love of learning, love of learners, and the love of bringing the first two loves together.”

However, when we invest so much of our hearts into someone or something, there is always the potential for heartbreak. You may be heartbroken by the struggles you see your students face daily or the lack of resources they have at home or in your school.

In addition, lack of support or systematic issues that you see hurting students can be absolutely soul crushing. Witnessing the injustice and inequities of the educational system can lead you to tears and feeling devastated. You may cry as you send students home for the night or home for the summer, wondering who will look out for them when you are not there.

If you find yourself feeling moments of love, savor those. If they are in the form of a student note or letters, save them in a special place. We both have a folder/box called Positive Notes for Days that I Really Need Them. We suggest you get one too. You can look at it on the days that your heart is breaking.

If you find yourself unsettled in the heartbreak of inequities, search out ways to advocate. Advocacy groups are always willing to accept volunteers and you may be just the person they are looking for.

It is no wonder that we can feel emotionally exhausted at the end of the day. There is a good chance that you could feel any or all of these emotional extremes in a day in the life of being a teacher. Our hope for you it that you can embrace the good, and utilize the strategies we suggested to address the bad, or find some other way to balance the two that works for you.

We leave you with this quote from NBA start Ray Allen, “Everything I know now…the pitfalls, the highs and lows, everything…it taught me and made me stronger.”

Recap:

As an educator, you make a personal investment in your students so it makes sense that you can feel many strong emotions. Extremes of pride and disappointment, hope and fear, connection and isolation, and love and heartbreak are regular occurrences for teachers. As you consider the emotional extremes in your teaching, remember to savor the positive emotions and consider ways to navigate the emotions that hurt in order to maintain a sense of balance in your life.

Quote:

“Teachers have three loves: love of learning, love of learners, and the love of bringing the first two loves together.” 

Scott Hayden

Related Episodes/Blog Posts:

Positive Notes for Days I Really Need Them

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