Balancing Acts

This has been quite a week of highs and lows, starts and stops, rights and wrongs. These kinds of weeks (or months) are the hardest to adapt to, but sometimes also the most rewarding (at least that's what I keep telling myself). In this career, as perhaps in many others, keeping a balance is paramount to another goal, keeping perspective. It's necessary to not only understand, accept, and honor the reasons why things happen the way they do and their relationship to everything else occurring around us, but to work diligently to place them in balance with everything else, too.

If I had a dime for every time I thought this week, "This is why I love my job" after having thought "I just want to move to Maine and sell fleece pants at Reny's," I'd have quite a few dimes. I like best when the former follows the latter naturally, but I will readily admit, sometimes I must force my thinking into balance. When this happens, though, the balancing act seems awkwardly unbalanced; this was one of those weeks. It took an entire group of eager learners to balance the one cranky student from an earlier class. It took several supportive emails of appreciation for my union work to balance the one or two critical missives I received. It took a lunchtime of laughter and debate about the word "portmanteau" to balance the one run-in with an administrator. Looking forward, it's going to take something pretty remarkable to balance the grading odyssey on which I am to depart tomorrow morning.

Why such an unbalanced balancing? By our natures, we teachers are quick to take responsibility for the negatives and credit others for the positives. We give to others readily, but deny ourselves frequently. We strive to combat misguided and offensive criticism by working harder and harder and harder still. We tend to operate from a place of guilt, having adapted to, or even adopted, the repeated messages, explicit or implied, of our incompetence. In short, we're too nice (except to ourselves), too easy (except on ourselves), too accommodating (except toward ourselves).

Ultimately, though, I'm okay with it. I can say with honesty that I'm not sure I'd want it any other way; of course, I also don't think it could really ever be any other way. But I'll always strive for the balance, create it when I have to, and recognize its occasional unbalanced-ness. Because, like the indomitable Popeye, "I yam what I yam."

Inspiration for TeacherBites

How long do teachers have, actually, to ingest their lunches? In my school, it's 30 minutes, door-to-door, which means more like 20 minutes, tops. First there's the student who needs to ask me a question about the essay rubric. Then there's the kid who dashes back to the room to pick up his forgotten hat or planner - just as I'm locking the door. Next, the colleague who has a union question, or needs to consult on a student, or just wants to know how my weekend was, stops me for a moment. Perhaps the principal will see me in the hallway and we'll quickly review how my professional goal for the year is going (it's going well, actually), and finally I'll head to the cafeteria to pick up my salad, where I'll run into the custodians, one of whom lays on his daily joke: "You're here today!" When I finally get into the teacher lunchroom, I'll eat and chat and think and laugh and take in all I can from my colleagues without whom my days at school wouldn't be as rich or as meaningful as they are. Then I'll repeat similar steps on the way back to my room to get there before my next class does.

We don't have much time together. The intent of this blog, then, is to offer up small plates of inspiration for teachers: weekly musings about the work we do and ways to infuse our daily  (and nightly... and weekend...)  work with enthusiasm and gratitude. And if you need a daily snack to nosh on, catch me on Twitter (@TeacherBites).