first year teacher

I'm normally pretty good about watering my plants regularly, but I'm starting to get worried about them. Disorder and mess is a dragon I battle daily. Along with all the tasks that need doing. Hydra is perhaps a better metaphorical monster though. I keep cutting off heads, and more keep popping up. How did the hydra get killed again? Was it it's own acid spit or something?

I said I was going to stop talking about how little time I have, because it's boring. But I have no time to talk about anything in depth this week, so I must at least peripherally mention that as the reason.

I'm working very hard.
I've got more anxiety and discomfort than I've had in awhile.
I've heard that's pretty normal for a first year teacher.
I'm doing my best to maintain some semblance of balance, getting sleep, spending some time with friends, getting at least a few minutes of exercise.

There are jobs that are hard work, and then there are jobs that are not just mentally, but emotionally demanding. This is one of them.

However, as I slowly learn how to be peaceful, happy, and effective in this challenging situation, it will only lead to more and more growth. I just have to be really conscious of avoiding emotional self-harm. It's like a game: how loving and emotionally supportive can I be of myself?

That will pay off dividends, because it means I can teach that to children, by example, and it means less going into "oh I'm a bad person/afraid of failing" (and that negative self-talk causes me to freeze like a rabbit, shut down, and/or withdrawal.)

A challenging aspect of this that I haven't previously addressed is when other people, either via my own warped perception, or in reality, think I'm a bad person/failure. That external reflection makes it harder to convince myself of the opposite, but convince myself I must, for my own sake and that of my little charges. I have to start caring waaaaaay less what people think of me, while still caring what I think of myself (meaning, still caring about putting in a satisfactory effort, doing what's right, serving with love and light.)

We will see how it all goes. This is almost certainly a much softer landing for a first year teacher than a public school, or a higher grade level. I'm with others, more experienced, much of the learning is social emotional so the fact that I deeply care about the children and strive to be a good human being myself counts for a lot, and I'm with people I like.

There is so, so, so much work to do. I whimper psychically when I contemplate it. As I try to do it during my "spare" time, I'm confronted with the impossibility of it, in my current configuration. I need to develop new super-powers, to do this.

Well, necessity is the mother of invention, perhaps it's the mother of evolution as well.

how about a relaxing image to end with. something I might fantasize about during a precious 25 minute nap:

Busy, Made-Up Words, Self-Compassion

General update: school hasn't even started properly, but I'm already super busy and a bit anxious.

I've heard from many sources that people just aren't good at teaching the first year or two, or three, so I should set reasonable goals and be forgiving with myself. I have a hard time being ok doing stuff I'm bad at, and as a friend pointed out to me, it's even worse when other people are sharing the same high expectations of me. "why can't you do it?" "you're right, what's wrong with me?"

Regardless where it's coming from, I'm trying to keep in mind that I need to be super supportive and kind and forgiving with myself as I do this process, because getting depressed and discouraged will only make me less effective.

The sad truth is that few if any education degrees get you anywhere near prepared for actually teaching. There's lots of factual knowledge, but it is locked away until you are able to master all the practical stuff that they didn't teach you, because they can't teach that part theoretically, it has to be learned through experience.

I've just got to put in massive effort (but not so much that I burn out) and be prepared to do a lot of learning from my mistakes, and try and maintain a sense of humor and self-compassion.

I also remember several of my teachers reminding me to intentionally pay attention to the good things that I'm doing. It can be easy to just focus on the negatives, but it makes sense to spend time on the positives, if just for emotional resilience and maintaining joy. (Same advice for the kids, see the good and the strengths and the progress, not just the problems, since we tend to exacerbate what we pay attention to.)

Anyways, I'm in it for the long haul, and I'm about to undertake what might be the most challenging period of that haul (and that's taking into account the crazy busy summer.) I'm thankful for the good work community I'm in: a fun, supportive, skilled, heartfelt bunch of people I get to be working with, and a culture of supporting and training the new staff as they/we transition to greater responsibility. Liking the people you're working with and feeling like a real team makes a big difference.

Anyways,  my allotted time is over, on to the next thing.


First, a word I made up a while ago but had forgotten about:

"Cabbernacky"

I haven't decided what it means, it sounds a bit "Alice in Wonderland"-ish, but I mainly like the sound of it.


Until next time (and I think I'm done talking about how busy I am, we can just assume this is continuing to be true until I mention otherwise. It's not a particularly engaging subject, it just happens to be what is going on in my life, every week.)

-IO

Just the facts, to the Max

My Road Trip

This is gonna be just the facts, ma'am, for reasons that should become clear:

time: 10:30 pm approximately.
Location: back in Vedic City, Iowa.
Morning wake up time: 4am, in Utah, which is 2am central time? yeah. Drove the whole day.
Also yesterday, drove the whole day
Also Friday, immediately after class, since class ended at noon... well, I guess first I stayed and helped the teachers pack up, with some other classmates, then we had lunch together. I've become fond of them all. A good bunch.

Then I packed up my room (I'd already started two days prior, so it didn't take to long) and left right after rush hour, getting a few hours of driving in before pulling into a campground.

I have... a lot of stuff to do, now. School starts in a week... ish? week and a half. but my job starts in a few hours, tomorrow morning.

At some later date, once I've compiled it, I may present a partial list, for your mirth and bogglment, at all the things I have that need to get done. The summer teacher training program is the most intense academic program I've been a part of so far, including my rigorous Masters, and even so, I believe I have more to do now, and with less preparation and structure and certainty, that I had over the summer.

Why am I not panicking?
I don't feel like it. Too much hassle.

It's the same as everything else I've been doing, of progressively increasing difficulty: break it down, small steps, do them one at a time, keep chipping away at it. Triage as necessary.

There's an added difficulty that schoolwork doesn't have, where schoolwork is very clearly defined success criteria, rubrics, etc., and life is...well, messy. uncertain. You have to make up your own rules and success criteria, really. Which is not a problem, but it is an additional step, and not an insignificant one.

I'm kind of soaking myself in uplifting spiritual literature these days, powerful speakers, etc, and that's kind of balancing the intensity of the work. That's what I do when I take a break from work, to decompress. I have a million things to do, and I'm going to do them as best I can, which is as well as most, but at the same time I'm very aware of spirit and allowing silence to permeate my actions and the inner voice to direct me.

I feel like the intensity of the work is a good foil for the depth of the spiritual intensity. Where previously my spiritual intensity left me ungrounded, now it is essential to keep me from being ground into the ground, and in that intense alchemy there is a profound integration going on.. Like... spirit is a nail, and the integration of spirit with my experience and life is the nail going into a rock, and when my action was easy, it was kinda like placing the nail in a crevice, or taping it on, it was not in there very deep, and it would keep falling out, but now the intensity of my action is like a rail gun or nail gun shooting that nail into the rock with such force it's stuck there and can be used for load-bearing activities. I'm thinking climbing. climbing seems like addition to this analogy. I'll let you figure out what it symbolizes while I catch some sleep.

good night! ^_^

Really the drive cross country was more like this... but that's not as funny. It was beautiful.

Sight beyond Sight

So I think my first student teaching position aged me ten to twenty years. that was back, what, a year and a half ago, winter, public school, my supporting teacher was going two to four times faster than me, and I was over my head. I felt like I had no idea how to do what I wanted. the kids wouldn't listen, I could understand why they wouldn't listen, and I was barely sleeping, waking up super early, with anxiety, and then spending a bunch of the early morning hours over preparing for the few minutes here and there that I got to teach. I fear pooped every morning when I came in to school.

fear pooping: when prey animals are startled often they evacuate their bowels as they run away. maybe to make them lighter? maybe to confuse the predators? in any case, people sometimes do it to. I didn't loose control of my bowels, thankfully, but I did feel a strong urge to use the restroom every morning before school.

It was a very stressful time. I didn't like it, and I wouldn't sign up for that experience as a long term thing. maybe if it was an ordeal I had to endure for a few months or years, in order to do all the wonderful stuff I want to do.

much of it was just me though, wanting to be perfect, or at least good, and instead coming in every day and doing something I felt awful at.

That was when I noticed some grey around my temples, and also when I noticed the numbers on the microwave clock were so blurry I couldn't read them. And when I developed a twitch.

I didn't really think about how harsh that experience was while I was in it though. I was mainly just worried I didn't have what it took to be a teacher, and that this was what teaching would feel like, forever.

In any case, once I chilled out a bit on my own expectations, and got out of that classroom, things slowly normalized, I think I actually stopped going grey my eyesight improved, and my twitch went away. So much compassion for public school teachers, and respect for the ones that actually make it work.

I mention this only as a prelude to the fact that I just got some glasses, for the first time. Even though my eyesight improved, it was still a bit blurry for far away stuff. It's a little disconcerting trying to focus on something far away, and just not being able to. like adjusting the knob on binoculars or an old school camera, and never being able to get it quite in focus.

And it was a pain while driving, since I couldn't read signs when they were far away. And when I was in classes and there was small text on the board, I had to squint (I'm curious as to why that works) which makes you look a bit off-putting, like you're reading something you find reprehensible.

I was reading a lot of text the last few weeks, and I started getting headaches, so I decided it was finally time to get some glasses. I just got them... yesterday, I think, and when I put them on...

Glasses are magic. It was amazing. I felt like I had super powers. Things were so clear it felt almost unreal. As someone who loves looking at beautiful natural vistas, how valuable to be able to appreciate every minute detail once more. I put this under the heading of "wonderful mundane things to be extremely grateful for."

There's really no other word for it than magic. That is what this is.

It's even worth the exorbitant price glasses companies charge (often 10 to 20 times the cost of production) because there is a near monopoly, and because people are ill informed and willing to pay it.

It's pretty criminal. Now that I've got my PD (a measurement you need to get fitted for your glasses apparently) I'm buying all future glasses from a reasonably priced online retailer. But still, considering the gift these glasses give, it is worth the price.

Second: I've been working on listening to "the quiet voice within" (the "Eye of Thundera's" sight beyond sight ;) and one of the things it brought to my attention was the subtle emotional violence with which I was approaching the hard work mentality. Though intensity of focus and a kind of intensity and dedication to your vision via massive action is good, inflicting pain on people is not. Sometimes otherwise kind people forget that they too are a people, and they are very harsh towards themselves (this phenomena seems to bleed over to others who are close to them, like family or committed romantic partners.)

Non-violence should include yourself as well. And often violence is a non-physical thing. One of my friends reminded me in an email that working super intensely for its own sake is egotistical. It's true. Even serving other people, (like at a soup kitchen) can become egotistical. I was guilty of this myself, into my sustainable living major, when I was growing to despise the world and its dumb, wasteful ways. Why didn't everyone just do what I said? Ego. Sitting around picking apart all the bad stuff that other people were doing, more ego. Working yourself to burn out, trying to fix everything because the world is ending and your the only one who can save it? More ego.

Non-egoic service means you understand every human being is a spark of divinity and deserves to be respected. It means you take opportunities to serve as its own reward. And it means letting go of the super critical judge-y voice criticizing everything and everyone. Being super critical is negatively correlated with effectiveness. With yourself, and of course with other people. We think that if we just get hard enough on ourself, we'll shape up, or at least, that if we are kind and compassionate and forgiving, we'll stop working as hard. There's a subtle distinction between being truly warm and compassionate and encouraging, and just being permissive while still quietly disliking yourself, but basically the scientific research says that self-compassion is the clear winner for productivity.


In any case, I made note of that subtle form of self harm and tried to work out a "baby and not the bathwater" situation. the efficiency and massive action were great. I can't perform at quite that level permanently, I need a little bit more balance in my life, but also, I discovered a lot of unnecessary things, that were removed from my day-to-day, that can stay gone. And a few techniques, and mind-frames, that were helpful in making me more efficient, giving me more time to do what was important to me.

OK, it's only Wednesday, but I wanted to get this off my mind while it was still fresh baked and fragrant, even though you probably wont get it till the weekend.

Bye for now!