Overwhelmed Teachers

Teachers long to celebrate not only their results but having a clear direction for their work. Without this clarity, we often can’t even see that our work is making a difference. Instead, we stay trapped in cycles of overwhelm that go something like this: get excited about an idea → try it → the students find all the ways it doesn’t work→ try something else→ nevermind, there’s a fire drill and an assembly next week→ here’s a new initiative from your principal to focus on asap→ you realize the real problem isn’t the thing you were trying to solve it’s something else→ change to a new idea→ try it→ forget what I was originally trying to do. I’ve been there, and more! What about the following?

• Going into your classroom or on your computer and forgetting what you were originally going to do.
• Keeping all your tabs open because you are actually working on all those things. Simultaneously.
• Trying something new and giving up by November. Trying something new in January and giving up by March. Trying something new in May.
• Making all the decisions while needing to drink enough water, to go to the bathroom, schedule an appointment, and eat during your “duty-free” 20-minute lunch.
• Spending most of your time thinking about what just happened or what’s about to happen (not the bigger picture).

Whew! No wonder you’re feeling overwhelm, right? Not anymore. If you’d like to see the Facebook live version of this post, you can check it out here.

What if these were the words you were saying?

• “They’re doing it!! I’m seeing growth and comprehension across my student body!”
• “The curriculum feels more inclusive, more kids engaging”
• “Built in scaffolds have been very helpful so that it doesn’t turn into a reactive situation.”
• “Students are feeling more confident at tackling complex texts now that they have seen some success with it.”
• “Students respond well when they feel they have the ability to engage with the material without me, their teacher.”
• “Thinking about it proactively is helping me be wiser about how much I give students to read or to do.”
• “The guiding questions help me stay focused on what’s important. I feel like I can do these lessons a million different ways.”

The comments all come from teachers who used my literacy lesson plan and joyfully stepped out of overwhelm. It’s possible for you too.

Tips for Overwhelmed Teachers

There are five simple solutions to get you there.

Manage your mind, don’t let it mismanage you.

Validate the heck out of how you feel, but emotions are meant to rent space in your body; don’t give them a permanent home. Once you’ve acknowledged, expressed, validated, and sat with how you feel, figure out what you’re thinking that’s causing you to feel that way, and try on a different thought. The trick is to find the balance between acknowledging what feels like reality and inviting ourselves to step into a better one. It’s like that thing in the magazines where they give you healthier food swaps that are still palatable. Here are three common overwhelm thoughts and their healthier swaps. 

• Perfection: Everything has to be perfect. Swap that out for I’m doing my best or Learning is a process. 
• Isolation: I’m the only one who can do this. Instead, try I share responsibility for my students’ success with lots of people, including the students themselves.
• Time: There isn’t enough time. Try I make the best use of the time I have or there’s plenty of time for the right work.

For more thought-swap ideas, check out this article–so many of these harmful thoughts are rooted in white supremacy culture.

Adopt an aligned curriculum.

This could be a highly reviewed curriculum for purchase or an OER, but some external roadmap toward your most important standards. This can alleviate some of the overwhelm of what to teach, but in its place can come “there’s so much to teach” because external curricula often overdeliver (thanks?). While I like using an aligned curriculum to help ensure I don’t lose the thread, I also like to debloat that sucker. I focus on the priority standards and put the rest in the maybe pile. I’d rather do a few things well than a lot of things very poorly. This approach accepts imperfection, runs toward creativity with the constraints of time, and shakes me out of isolation. Having an external roadmap makes me a better collaborator. It’s not my idea versus someone else’s–we are navigating to the destination together.

Don’t unpack the standards.

Compare them. A lot of districts spend time on long, drawn-out standards unpacking, and while there is value in deep textual analysis (I am an English teacher, after all), people can get stuck perfecting and arguing in this process for a long time. In ELA, we often act like we have to teach a standard from scratch, but our standards spiral. Look at the standards in the grade level before yours. See? You are not responsible for giving students the entire origin of the concept of theme. You probably only have one or two fresh items to introduce. Again, let go of perfection and trust the colleagues before and after you to opt your classes out of the time war.

Use my literacy lesson plan.

This lesson plan is extremely process-based (not perfection or performance-based). Students are engaged the whole time in learning–not in performing. The lesson plan relies extensively on collective action of the classroom community–how we read, discuss, and write together matters. The teacher may design the lesson beforehand, but once class starts, the students become the primary agents (especially as they gain experience with the form). Finally, time is not the enemy of this simple lesson plan. Doing a few things well is the whole idea.

Trust a system.

Between an aligned curriculum and a daily literacy lesson plan, there is a system. I trust it and rely on it to buoy me against the waves of school. The system includes a cycle for teaching reading, writing, discussion, and language. Without these cycles, I would lose the clarity I need in order to see the impact of instruction on students. These system pieces are covered in-depth in my forthcoming course–something I’ve never shared to this extent before and is a particular zone of genius for me. This ability to create a stress-free yet stable commitment to our multi-faceted standards is what teachers ask me to share all the time. I’ll have more details announced soon!

Is teaching worth the stress?

How are you feeling about these simple solutions? You may be feeling like it’s not really the standards that are the issue because so many other things may be contributing to any overwhelm you may be experiencing. Certainly there are other issues that seem more pressing. My simple lesson plan used consistently is well within your locus of control, and can bring you some relief.