The Middle

Well, here I am, in the middle. Seems a blur in getting here really. One minute I was young, youthful, full of promise and potential; the next I am in mid-life with menopause, emphasis on the pause, and everything seems less shiny somehow. 

It's the same old routines, same old dreams, same old shitty habits, same old problems... but with some physical party-quirks thrown in from time to time. What the hell happened? And, more importantly, where to from here? 

I've been pondering this a lot lately and this is what I have come up with so far. 

For women in my generation, and possibly others, many of us were given two strong messages growing up. 1. be a good girl, everyone likes a good girl who puts others needs before her own, and 2. girls can do anything, no-one ever said 'do everything' mind you but that must just have got lost in translation. I think we ended up in a whirlwind as we grew up trying to please everyone else while living up to the ideal of being able to do everything. Some of it has been exhilarating, and I am grateful for the highs and lows and lessons learned along the way. We have done the best we could in the myriad roles we have carried simultaneously, without complaint because good girls don't complain, but in the end we're often left feeling like somehow we just haven't measured up. 

After thirty years of my adult life living like this I know I am simply exhausted. 

So, where to from here? 

Well, I guess I have a decision to make. I can continue the way I have but perhaps without the youthful exuberance I once had, and it will be OK. I'll likely feel a bit better in time once and things will settle down. I will assume the role western society seems to expect of me which is that I age quietly if I can't be bothered making the effort to avoid aging, and slowly fade into the background. Alternatively, I can break down some of the barriers and brush aside some of the bullshit beliefs that have ring-fenced my life to date and live a little more on my own terms. I can see this time as an opportunity for regeneration and renewal, the entering into a new phase of my life. Women of a 'certain age' were once honoured for their wisdom and valued in their communities, in tribal societies, they were consulted and listened to on matters of importance. There's still plenty of gas in the tank and I have plans! So it is plan B for me. 

I am not going to throw everything away, I love my life in so many ways. I will however embrace a new energy that comes from clarity, confidence and connection. I will define my boundaries. I will embrace my values. I will be as gentle as I want to be. I will laugh as loud as I want to laugh. I will dance and sing and cry and shout. I will stop apologising for being the woman that never measured up and I will just be the woman that I am, unapologetically. 

This middle is not the end, it was never meant to be, and it has all the potential to be marvellous. 

If you would like to join Megan on this adventure, into embracing the potential in this fabulous 'middle' then please feel free to check out the Mid-Life Mastery coaching programme https://bit.ly/midlife_mastery  

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. 

Teaching and Christmas Dinner- a metaphor

I’ve just been preparing kai (food) for our week ahead and whilst in the kitchen my mind wandered, as it does, and it got me thinking about how teaching is a bit like preparing a Christmas dinner for a big family. Here are my thoughts... 

 

Let’s imagine it is Christmas Day (or any special occasion where whānau or family may come together to share kai/food) and you are hosting the event. You have prepared well, considered the menu, done the shopping and have everything set up to go.

And then people start arriving.

Your brother pops in to introduce you to his new partner, and yes he’d said he was bringing a date so it’s all good. You have a good chat and in the midst of the conversation you learn that your brother’s partner has just become vegan. You immediately run through the menu in your mind to see what is vegan friendly and realise that you need to whip something up. So you trawl through some websites to find recipes that you have the ingredients for in your home. Crisis averted, you have found a couple of dishes that will work, phew! You also go and change the seating plan as perhaps it might not be best to sit your brother’s vegan partner and your strongly opinionated beef farming uncle together.

Now, you start cooking the meal you have prepared and your mum and aunty arrive in the kitchen. They start opening the oven, poking the roast and making tut tut noises at the vegies. It feels like they are doing an autopsy on the meal before you’ve even cooked it. They start talking about how they used to prepare the Christmas dinner and how they used the Woman’s Weekly recipes or the Edmond’s cookbook and don’t understand these young ones who have to do everything through computers. After giving you a bunch of advice you didn’t ask for, they tell you they are sure you will do fine and then toddle off to wander around your garden- probably to discuss what you could be doing better there. You proceed with doing the potatoes the way you read on Jamie Oliver’s site which makes them crunchy on the outside and fluffy inside.

At the same time your niece wanders through and asks what is going to be for lunch. You tell her. She screws up her nose and says ‘yuck!’ to it all. Oh well, can’t please them all.

Then your sister comes in and reminds you about your nephew’s peanut allergy, you assure her it’s all under control. After she leaves you dive into the bin to look at packets to make sure there are no peanuts in any of the packaged foods. All good, just make sure he doesn’t have cheesecake and everything should be fine.

Now you get on with the cooking and realise that one of the rings on your oven isn’t working… damn! This is definitely not what was planned. It will all work out OK of course, just a bit of juggling required. You take a big breath, check in with the cooking times, and rearrange the pots. The meal will be a few minutes late.

Just while you are doing this your partner pops his head around the door to see how you are getting on. You tell him that everything is fine and he smiles and says ‘that’s good, I knew you’d have it all under control’. He then tells you that he forgot to mention that one of his colleagues from work who was going to be alone for the holiday season is joining you all for the meal, he didn’t think that one more would be a problem. You smile nicely and say, ‘I’m sure we can work it out’ as you peel another potato and map out how you might rearrange the already full table. You ask him to grab another chair from the garage and quickly rearrange the table as well as you can- it’s not as perfectly laid out as you had envisaged but it works.

Your cousin pops in to let you know that the kids are getting a bit restless and to see if you need any help… you consider saying yes please but realise that explaining what needs to be done and where everything is will take longer than just doing it yourself so say you’ve got it sorted but suggest that they might take the kids outside for a game of cricket. Killing two birds with one stone, you continue with preparing the meal.

Finally it is time to eat.

You call out to everyone that the meal is ready. Some are still out in the garden, some are watching a holiday movie, a couple have already started on the wine and are well on their way. Slowly everyone drifts to the dining table.

There is a tremendous spread on the table and people pause for a moment then start digging in. There is a happy bubble of chat. Bowls and plates of food are being shared around. Happy sounds of people enjoying their food ensue; your brother’s partner enjoys your whipped up vegan delights, your uncle loves the roast, the kids are hungry after their game of cricket so tuck in (including your fussy niece who doesn’t utter yuck once to your surprise), and your mum and aunty notice how fluffy and crispy the roast potatoes are and they even ask you for the recipe.

You sit back and smile. It was really hard work but it was all worth it.

Everyone is enjoying the fruits of your labour, as are you. It is a moment of bliss and the mess you have left behind in the kitchen is forgotten for now.

It wasn’t perfect, to be honest if it was going to be perfect you wouldn’t have invited anyone to come along but then that would’ve missed the point wouldn’t it?   

 

So much of this scenario is like teaching. Constant change, everyone has an opinion, you work your butt off trying to keep everyone happy, you can feel quite lonely and unappreciated at times, people think you can cope with anything (and you often do even in trying circumstances), you have to make do with the resources you have rather than the ones you want or need, your plans rarely go exactly to plan… but in the end you get the job done and when it all flows it really is a thing of beauty. Sure, there is always more to do, but your efforts are worth it.

And it’s never going to be perfect, that’s the point! Let’s embrace what it is instead of what we imagine it should be and enjoy the imperfection of it all, just like a crazy family Christmas dinner.

 

(Please note: this story not an actual representation of any real Christmas I have attended or hosted... yet!)

 

Heading into the Learning Zone

We often sell our learners a lie that says learning should be fun and easy. In reality anything that stretches our brain is more likely to be challenging and potentially frustrating than fun and easy! That doesn't mean it won't be worthwhile, inviting or engaging, just that it will probably annoy us at some stage. This is life in the learning zone... 

The learning zone can be a place of exploration, challenge, playing with ideas, questions, frustration, discovery, failure, mistakes, success, joy, meaning-making, and so much more. This is a much more exciting place for our brain than the comfort zone which is more like sitting on the couch watching telly eating Tim-Tams- a nice place to be and chill out but not one where we develop and grow. 

I guess this is part of the discussion around what learning is and how we know it is happening. 

In teaching it often feels that we spend a lot of time hoping that the skills and knowledge our learners need gets caught rather than taught. We want our learners to head into this learning zone where they can stretch and grow with confidence, knowing that they will be faced with challenges but how often do we give them a map to get there, and the skills and knowledge to make sure they can thrive? 

One of the skills we can give our learners is knowing how to acquire knowledge and skills that they can use when they are in the learning zone. We don't know what we don't know and our job as teachers is to create opportunities to bridge this gap for our learners. 

Gretchen Wegner describes a study cycle in the following way: 

• Step 1: Encoding (input) learn
• Step 2: Retrieval (output) test - find out what you can and can’t recall
• Step 3: Encode stuff you didn’t know in a new and different way (Re-learn)

I think this can be used in all classrooms to support learners acquire skills and knowledge. I see that we can teach surface skills and knowledge explicitly, which is encoding, in order for our learners to go deeper and then transfer their learning to new situations with confidence.

Some of the skills we can teach explicitly that could be helpful for preparing our learners to venture into the learning zone might be:

• how to ask questions
• how to search for information
• strategies they can use when faced with frustration or confusion
• how their brain learns
• the conditions that they prefer to learn in

Retrieval is where we learn what has been learned and what needs to be relearned. This doesn't have to be drill and kill... in fact drill and kill is going to bore the brain and that's not a great way to make things stick! 

Here are a few ideas to practice retrieval- during and after explicit teaching:

• Think pair share technique 

• Plan what you will tell someone at home - teachers communicate with families to let them know that their child will be telling them something about xxx tonight so they can support this 

• Write the three most important things - draw pictures

• Tell three different people a different thing you have learned 

• Talk to a partner then share what your partner said to another person 

• Bubble map, brain storm, use other graphic organisers 

• Use thinking routines that support retrieval such as Headlines, I used to think now I know, +1 routine

• Make a short video explaining your new learning that can be shared in an online journal

• Complete a quiz face to face or using an online tool like Kahoot!

Once we know what we don't know then we can set about relearning the bits we missed in a new way.

My ambition as a teacher is that my learners are challenged and have opportunities to dig deep, explore their interests and feel success.

I see that part of my job is to help provide a map for them to do this so being aware of skills and knowledge my learners need and planning carefully to explicitly teach these as efficiently as possible is vital. It is not easy work but then that is part of being in the learning zone right?

The impermanence of a rose

Everything dies. To remind myself of this I bought myself a small bunch of roses today. 

'Impermanence is a principle of harmony. When we don’t struggle against it, we are in harmony with reality.' Pema Chodron

I was listening to a podcast by Dr Rick Hanson and Forrest Hanson this morning (https://www.rickhanson.net/being-well-podcast/). During the session they were talking about impermanence, they referred to the Buddhist cornerstone of impermanence and how this wisdom can allow us to live our one big beautiful life more richly. They mentioned the metaphor of a rose; the rose is beautiful but the beauty doesn't last, the flower wilts, the petals fall and eventually it rots. We can bemoan the death of the flower or take it even further and avoid the inevitable sense of loss by avoiding roses altogether. In doing so, though, we lose something. We lose the experience of watching the petals unfurling, opening up to reveal the flower's hidden depths, witnessing the beauty of the rose in it prime. 

We can live it safe and small to avoid feeling pain from loss as we, and everyone and everything around us, grows and changes. The pain will still come eventually, it always does. If we invest our energy into resistance we increase our suffering and deepen our despair but until the pain arrives it gives us some sense of control and protection. This is an illusion but it's a comfortable one. 

The alternative is to accept that tough times will come, we will lose and fail, we will falter on the path. But we will also have moments of deliciousness. This acceptance can give us the freedom to live our one big beautiful life more fully; enabling us to take the risks, to follow dreams, to explore opportunities. It can also offer us grace when things go wrong, when we are faced with loss, failure and despair. 

At the moment I am in a state of flux, between places and that feels uncomfortable. So today I bought myself these roses to remind me that this is life; it can be hopeful, and beautiful, but nothing lasts forever. What am I doing with this one big beautiful life I have been given? There is nothing promised in this world apart from the fact that everything dies... this is a gift, I guess we just need to be brave enough to accept it. 

“Life is fragile, like the dew hanging delicately on the grass, crystal drops that will be carried away on the first morning breeze.” Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

Perfection is a lie we tell ourselves to keep us playing small

Who loves failing? Can I hear a YAY? Not many huh?

Failure usually hurts in some way, even when we know it is a key to learning and growth. Some failure can hurt others and even cause major problems, but thankfully most failures aren’t that catastrophic. Most failures actually seem to end up hurting our pride and our sense of self more than anything else which whilst not catastrophic can have serious ripple effect.

The pain caused by failure is there to protect us so we remember not to make that mistake again. It was extremely useful in the ancient past when our lives literally depended on not repeating mistakes like wandering near a certain cave where something with big teeth and claws was hanging out! However our pain avoidance muscles can play tricks on us in the modern world, we are no longer likely to be eaten by a sabre tooth tiger (feel free to replace this with a more accurate ancient animal) if we make a mistake but the weight of public opinion, self judgement and anxiety seem to have teeth and claws too. And once their claws sink in it can be hard to shift them.

So we protect ourselves.

We avoid the risk of making mistakes.

To our own detriment.

One of the fanciest ways to protect ourselves is perfectionism which often comes with a range of side-kicks, my favourite being procrastination. Striving for perfection seems like admirable goal and to be fair I am very grateful if the surgeon who operates on my loved ones has a desire to be as close to perfect as possible. But how many times do we put off things because it isn’t perfect? We don’t go for a walk because the weather isn’t as nice as it could be. We don’t call a friend because we aren’t feeling as happy as we think we should be. We don’t go out because we haven’t lost as much weight as we wanted to. We don’t follow through on the idea, start the business, write the book etc because we haven’t got the time/energy/finances/support to make it perfect. We put this all off for a sunnier, happier, skinnier, slower day… that never comes! This perfect day is a lie we have been told, usually by people trying to sell us something, and it’s one that we keep telling ourselves. To an extent it keeps us safe but it also keeps us small.  

A rich, fulfilling life isn’t perfect. I recall a line from a poem often quoted by a wise mentor of mine, Trevor Grice, ‘if it weren’t for the rocks in its bed, the stream would have no music’. We need the ups and downs of life to truly experience the range of emotions that give life its colour, goodness the world would be boring if everything was coloured sunshine yellow!

Mediocrity is not the solution to perfection by procrastination though. Stepping bravely, embracing our vulnerability, toward uncertainty is what we are aiming for.  Embracing good enough and kaizen (the concept of small, seemingly imperceptible, changes over time) is part of it. Trusting ourselves and others more helps. Letting go of trying to control everyone and everything is certainly going to reduce our stress and give us some relief. This means accepting that others aren’t perfect either.

I believe strongly that we all have gifts and talents. I worry that many of these gifts and talents never get fulfilled because of the lies we tell ourselves about perfection. You are already good enough and you never know just how great you could be until you take that leap of faith to find out… are you ready?