Teachers- It's time to let go of perfection

Teaching can be a stressful profession; it is intense with the level of human interaction and multiple plates we have spinning at any given time. To be honest, I don’t see that changing in a hurry. I do however think we can influence the impact this stress has on us by getting real about success as a classroom teacher.

Teaching is a little like having a career in a fishbowl, everyone can see us and make judgements if they wish. This can trigger massive insecurity and over-compensating which, ironically perhaps, more often than not leads to poorer performance. We try so damned hard to be perfect and it just doesn’t happen. I often say that the only perfect lesson I have ever led is the one in my imagination! What can we do about this then?

The first thing I suggest is adopting a healthy perspective and this means letting go of our love affair with perfection. Please give of your best, we are talking about the lives of children here so they deserve us to do the best we can, but that is not about perfection. Perfection is actually a lie we tell ourselves to keep us small and stop us taking risks where we might fail. Have you ever not started a project because you are afraid you won’t get it right? Or have you deliberately self sabotaged e.g. binge watched Netflix instead of writing that article, putting in that application or finishing a given task? It may well be that perfectionism was sitting underneath the procrastination or self sabotage. I would argue that our learners don’t need perfect teachers but they do need real people as teachers who can demonstrate living and loving with all their imperfections.

When we let go of perfection we open up the door to real learning. We allow ourselves the freedom to make mistakes and, importantly, to be OK with it! What a wonderful example that is for our learners. Another thing with letting go of perfection is it enables us to be more accepting of other’s mistakes, imperfections and flaws- perhaps it allows us to be more empathetic and relatable. When we let go of perfection we stop wasting energy on wishing that the world and everyone in it meets some arbitrary ideal and can invest our energy more wisely on the things we actually can influence. It also gives us space to create goals and define success in healthier ways that actually work for us, not against us.

Destination addiction is when we keep deferring our happiness until various things have happened, it goes a little something like this: I will be happy... when I get a promotion, when I have all of my planning done, when I get through this term or semester, when we go on our holiday at Christmas, when I get a new car etc. You get the picture. Chasing happiness is a fool's errand. Happiness is more likely to be found when you enjoy whatever is happening right here and now. All emotions are fleeting and we miss the good stuff that happens now if we are always looking for a more perfect moment at a later date. Letting go of perfection opens up the opportunity to enjoy more of the life we are living right here and now, in all it’s glorious imperfection and messiness.

If perfection isn’t what we are aiming for then what is? I think the magic lies in setting achievable goals and noticing our own progress. As an example when starting with a new class your most important jobs are, in my opinion, building relationships and creating routines. So I’d wrap my goals around this, one goal might be to learn to pronounce all learners names correctly and when I can do this it’s pat on the back time. It might be that I am aiming to see all students participate in the classroom programme, it will take some learners longer to settle into a rhythm than others but I celebrate as each person comes on board and acknowledge the progress that we make along the way. It is about knowing where we are heading and then acknowledging the small steps we take as we move towards our larger goal. This is one place where we will find a sense of success and happiness in our work- it helps us to focus on what actually is important rather than be distracted by what is happening outside of the fishbowl we work in.

The beauty of this is when we gain a sense of success and happiness, then we are often more efficient and effective in our work which leads to further success and happiness… it is a positive spiral. In the end it has to be better than beating ourselves up for not being perfect eh?

Learning is a dance

The last month or two have been huge for me- recovering health (#wip), a lot of change, taking a leap of faith career wise, studying te reo Māori, learning about running a business (so. many. little. things!), and rehearsing for a show. Some days I cry because it all seems too much, other days I laugh at the joy of discovering new (to me) things and all of the time I am grateful for the opportunities and experiences I am lucky to have. 

I am writing this as I have been processing a lot about how I am coping with the changes and learning processes that I am going through. I am a teacher, at heart I always will be, I've been doing it for so long now I think it is just part of me if that makes sense, but I have been immersed in being a learner in a very confronting and focused way lately too... I think that's where the tears have come in! I will use the dancing for the show as an example. 

I love dancing but I am not a dancer, unless the 80s music comes on loud and the vibe is really good then watch out world I am owning that dancefloor (it doesn't always look pretty or co-ordinated but the enthusiasm is off the charts)!! Despite this I have ended up in a whole lot of dance numbers for the show I am in at the moment, and I thought 'oh well, I'll give it a whirl'. Unfortunately I missed two weeks of rehearsals at the start due to illness and then I went to my first dance rehearsals... oh my goodness! I was everywhere except where I needed to be in the routines that I had looked at online, and I was so bound up with not getting the first part right that new routines were lost on me, quite frankly I had no idea what I was doing. Our choreographer is a genius (I don't say that lightly either) and a brilliant teacher who really does a fantastic job with our community theatre. She was so kind and patient with me as I tried to catch up but I felt like I was letting everyone down, hogging our choreographer's time and I just got so frustrated and annoyed with my inadequacy. I would try to practice at home and fail in my own living room too so I'd give up. What was worse was that many of the other dancers seemed to have either studied dance as they'd grown up or were studying dance... oh and they were a lot younger too! I seemed to be getting worse, not better, at each rehearsal. So there I was having a pity party... everyone is better than me, I can't do this, it's too hard, I suck. Then it dawned on me, I had heard things like this somewhere else... yes, at school from some of our learners. Embarrassingly, I realised that everything I taught my learners about learning; resilience is something we gain from doing hard things, that it's OK for learning to be hard, you have to go through hard to get to easy, that we can use our mistakes as information etc; all that wisdom I espoused so liberally as I coached my kids to their own greatness, was lost in the rhetoric of beating myself up for not being good enough fast enough. Not only that, I was inadvertently diminishing the years of hard work and dedication of my cast mates who seemed to get the steps so easily. Of course they would pick it up easier, they had trained and put the hard yards in for years in order to do this. I needed to acknowledge that I need to work harder, break the steps down a little further, take it a little slower, because I don't have the well honed skills they have from the hard work they have put in. They are experts, heck they could even help me... if I was brave enough to ask! I expect my learners at school to embrace the discomfort and take responsibility for their learning and they are just kids!  Thank goodness for this flash of insight and taking responsibility for my own learning... I am pleased to say I am getting there- literally one step at a time.

Erika Twani quotes Leland Val Van der Wall in her book Becoming Einstein's Teacher who describes learning in the following way: 

Learning is when you consciously entertain an idea, get emotionally involved with the idea, step out and act on the idea, and improve the results in some area of your life.

Becoming Einstein’s Teacher, page 77

If this is learning then we can see why it can be overwhelming at times. It takes consciousness or awareness, you need to connect with it in some way, and then you have to do something with it. You need to know what you don't know so you can know when you've learned it. There's nothing passive in here. 

As an adult I think we sometimes forget that learning is hard work and that it takes effort, action and time. Many of us who have been successful in our study or previous roles can feel out of sorts and become frustrated with ourselves when it isn't easy in our new roles... we were successful there, why can't we be successful here?! Many of us have well-honed comparison muscles, which have been exercised in making us feel good when we have been successful in the past, and then we become learners again in our new roles, it seems that everyone else is doing OK and we are left feeling confused at our perceived lack of competence. I used to train experienced teachers working in a new environment with a specific programme, we had high standards so we sought successful classroom teachers to be our educators but often during the 10 week training period there would be a moment or two of utter despair... when will I get it? I feel so dumb? Why can't I get it!? What's wrong with me????  One of my colleagues, Kathleen, who had a long experience with this programme and had trained many educators would use the following analogy and I loved it... you see the athletes at the Olympics, like the ice skaters, they are amazing to watch, graceful, strong and flawless. They make it look SO EASY! Of course it looks easy, they've trained to make it look easy; we don't see the years and years of getting up in the small hours, training for hours, organising their life around this passion and pursuit. We don't see the hundreds of times they fell, the tears they cried, or the frustration they felt. We just see a few minutes of a beautiful, flawless performance. 

When we start something new, we shouldn't be surprised that it is hard. We should expect to feel a little uncomfortable... this is learning after all. When we look at others around us we can choose to compare ourselves and come up wanting or we can choose to appreciate the work that has gone in to what we perceive as better than where we are right now. We can seek advice from experienced peers, they may even become like wayfinders for us, and we can also acknowledge that it will take effort, action and time for us to get from where we are to there (wherever you decide there is for you)- this is self compassion in action. A child learning to walk doesn't just go from rolling over one day to sprinting like Usain Bolt (although I admit toddlers can get some speed up when necessary!), there's a process, and it takes effort, action and time. We don't dismiss their efforts and refuse to acknowledge progress if they aren't up and running immediately, in fact it's quite the opposite usually, there is often great celebration for the smallest step (pardon the pun) in the right direction. 

I figure this is a reminder to me, and anyone who reads this, that as life long learners there are going to be times when things get hard and that's OK. We have a choice when it gets hard, we can sink into despair at our perceived inadequacies or we can step boldly towards the learning knowing that we will need effort, action and time. We can fall into the comparison trap and limit ourselves based on what we perceive of others, or we can put one foot in front of the other and take responsibility for our journey whilst learning from those who have navigated these paths before. And finally we need to remember that shame will keep us small and stop us learning, self compassion will help us grow and learn more. The choice is up to us- learning is like a dance and it can lead to wonder and joy if we step towards it with everything we've got.