Listening and Bears

I've got a small goal that I've been pursuing for about a year now. That is to listen to my students more. As I've been more intentional about listening, I've noticed that it happens in places and times that I've found unexpected. A few observations:
  • I noticed that in the mornings, I had a bunch of students in my class, but I didn't really have meaningful interactions with them. I had the same 3 to 5 kids who would check in, I'd make my traditional morning joke, they'd laugh out of pity, then I'd get back to working on grading, or planning, or reading an article, or whatever. I had thought that I was particularly good at interactions with students. But this realization made me think I had a lot more work to do.
  • I noticed that I had stopped greeting students as they came into my classroom. I've started to make more of an effort at this. There was an awesome video that went around social media of a teacher who had handshakes with all of his kids. The guy is a freaking legend. I've got like 9 handshakes. I'm getting there.

  • I noticed that I had a lot of great surface-level relationships with kids. But I didn't have as many deep, personal, meaningful relationships as I thought I should have. I am, deep down, a people's person. It's a huge reason why I teach. So to realize that I didn't have kids coming to me and talking about real issues meant I wasn't interacting in a way that fostered those conversations.
  • Lastly, I realized I was having too many days where I was trying to be more serious than I felt natural. I wasn't being me. I was acting. And while 'fake it 'till you make it' works in some scenarios, if you do that in the classroom, you won't make it very long.
So what to do? Those realizations were a bit of a gut-check, a reminder to be humble and realistic about the impact I have with students. The kids are why we all teach, and that had been lost on me a little bit. It's easy with all of the grading, the phone calls, the committee meeting and the extra curriculars - but if we step back and think about why we spend so much time in these damn buildings*, it's because of the students.

*On a side note, this is how I know we'll be OK despite Betsy DeVos being in charge of public education in America. She has without any shadow of a doubt underestimated the fight she will receive from teachers if she tries to screw over public education.

Like I said, this has been a journey a year or so in the making. A few changes I've tried to make:
  1. I don't work in the mornings. GAAAAAHHH! I so struggle with this! I have so much to do and so little time. But it works. From 7:45 AM to 8:05 AM, I'm a coffee-sipping, conversation-having, handshake-creating beast.
  2. I walk with students. I'm a high school teacher, so this doesn't apply to all grade levels. After a class is over, if I'm in the middle of a good conversation, I'll walk the student towards their next class. It skirts hall-duty a bit, but it has led to a bunch of great conversations, some having to do with class, some having to do with life.
  3. I'm goofy in class. Why? Because that's exactly who I am the rest of my life. So in class, we laugh a lot. We watch goofy videos to break up the lesson. We play music and dance (and sing...sort of). I speak loudly and in a Greek accent, probably more than my neighbors appreciate. And IT IS A BLAST!
It's always a work in progress. So many mentor teachers along the way have given the same advice - that if you feel you are good enough, then you've stopped learning. That's why this blog is so good for me, and why I think so many leaders in education advocate for blogging. As I write, and as I think about what I'm going to write, I examine myself and my classroom. Often times I like what I analyze, but there are times that I don't! Rather than those things I don't like continuing on for years, I'm better prepared to catch them and adjust.

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Have a great week!

Thanks for reading this blog! I hope you'll consider taking a moment to comment below and turn this into a conversation. Whether you are an educator or not, we have all had common experiences with education both good and bad. I want to hear what you think! 

About Me:

My name is Alec Chambers. I am a high school history and government teacher at a small, urban public school in Kansas City called Center High School. We regularly kick tail. Among many awards, we were named a National Blue Ribbon School in 2014. I don't just teach at Center- I also graduated from Center in 2006 after attending Center Schools K-12. I have a degree in Political Science, a second degree in International Relations, a third degree in Education and a Master's of Arts in Teaching. I have an unofficial degree is soccer. All of those degrees have led me to the high-paying teaching profession! I have two beautiful daughters, Katena and Emily and am married to the most awesome woman on the planet and fellow educator, Angela. All struggles aside, my life is flippin' awesome.  

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Ruts and Other Stuff

It's funny what will get you on a roll again. I think it's pretty natural for any of us to get into ruts. It happens in relationships. It happens to athletes. It happens emotionally. So it is only reasonable to expect it to happen professionally.

Todd Whitaker came to our district today to speak to us about being great educators. One of the lines that hit me was about what exactly makes teaching so difficult. A lot of non-teachers think it's the hours, the idea of working with (fill-in-blank-age-student-you-are-deathly-afraid-of) or the low pay. Todd said, and I think he's right, that none of that really is true. The really difficult part about teaching is the intensity of every moment; the knowledge that almost every single second you are at work is vitally important to the growth and development of a real human being. It's why the term burn-out is such a fitting term for why so many teachers quit the careers they so desperately love.

Pressure makes diamonds. Well, yeah. But pressure applied indiscriminately tends to just break things.

The funny thing about ruts that I'm discovering as I grow older is that you often don't realize that you're in one until you finally get out of one. I used to picture a rut being like a ditch. Your view of the world changed. When you're in a ditch, you know without a doubt you're in a ditch. You know you need to get out, but you just keep slipping on the sides as you try.

A better analogy than a ditch, I think, is a road where years and years of use have created indentations in the road that are small and easy to not notice. Without much attention, these indentations can start to guide where you travel and limit your ability to move around. But they're small. They're easy to not notice. And if you're in one for a while, they can start to feel normal, maybe even kind of comfortable. They don't totally restrict you like being in a ditch would. They just kind of keep you doing the same thing you did yesterday, and the day before, and the day before.

The other thing I really like about this analogy is that it is easy for everyone around you to see these marks in the road and think that if so many other people drive their tires there, then surely that's the best place to drive. That, I think, is how ruts start to feel normal and comfortable, especially in a career like teaching. Until one day you get some damn fed up with those indentations in the road that you decide to just get off the highway, because one more day in those indentations doing the same thing would just make you snap. And that, my friends, is burn-out.

I haven't been in a ditch. I may have been in some very worn and used tire tracks, though. Listening to Todd Whitaker talk about being great has given me a little wake up call, not necessarily that I've been stuck in a rut, but that I need to be wary of falling into a rut every day. This is especially true now that I have two beautiful kids to keep me really busy and generally really tired. Again, ruts can get comfortable when you're tired. And the longer you're in a rut, the more effort it takes to get out of it.

More to come. I haven't been posting much, largely because my youngest daughter still wakes up twice a night! But this needs to be a priority for me. I need to carve out an hour a week to write here, to reflect and to think. As much as I hope you, dear reader, enjoy and learn something by reading my thoughts, it is selfishly also really important to me.

Have you ever found yourself in a rut? How did you get out of it? How did you fight against becoming comfortable being average?

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Thanks for reading this blog! I hope you'll consider taking a moment to comment below and turn this into a conversation. Whether you are an educator or not, we have all had common experiences with education both good and bad. I want to hear what you think! 

About Me:

My name is Alec Chambers. I am a high school history and government teacher at a small, urban public school in Kansas City called Center High School. We regularly kick tail. Among many awards, we were named a National Blue Ribbon School in 2014. I don't just teach at Center- I also graduated from Center in 2006 after attending Center Schools K-12. I have a degree in Political Science, a second degree in International Relations, a third degree in Education and a Master's of Arts in Teaching. I have an unofficial degree is soccer. All of those degrees have led me to the high-paying teaching profession! I have two beautiful daughters, Katena and Emily and am married to the most awesome woman on the planet and fellow educator, Angela. All struggles aside, my life is flippin' awesome.  

Follow me on Twitter
Follow me on Google