It is often said that “perception is reality” and that has definitely been the case for me throughout this past school year. Now that the year is over I have taken the time to step back and reflect on my experiences throughout the year and I have realized that I made an unfortunate mistake: I did not clean my glasses. In saying this I am referring to the fact that I did not effectively take the time throughout the year to reflect on what was going on and what I was learning through it all. As a result, my ‘lenses’ became quite foggy and clouded my mind as I progressed throughout the year. This had a profound impact on my mindset, relationships with others, and strongly contributed to my distorted perception of this year being “the toughest professional year of my life.”
I began this past school year in a leadership role at a new school (I had been at my previous school for 12 years in a similar role) and entered a department that had been working together for many years with an established culture in place. As I sought to learn about each individual and how the group functioned I began to experience many tensions and challenges throughout the first month. These tensions and challenges carried over into the second month and it seemed like a game of whack a mole as when one issue seemed to be resolved another came up. Some of these challenges were a result of us not knowing about each other and/or how to work with each other, while other tensions came from an educational philosophy perspective and these were the tough ones to work through.
As the year began with so much turmoil I found that I was quite mentally and physically exhausted after each day and as a result I was not devoting as much time to reflecting on my experiences as I had normally done in my past years of teaching. What began as a weekly endeavour became a bi-weekly one, a monthly event, and then ultimately not much at all. The tensions and challenges seemed (at the time) to be piling up on each other and I felt it was all I could do to go to school, do my job, and try and keep the peace in the department so that no new issues emerged. While I did try and work through all the tensions with individual teachers (and the entire department when appropriate) I was feeling overwhelmed by the sheer number of ‘things’ between myself and the group. These perceptions were guiding my mindset throughout each day and sadly school became a place that I did not feel welcomed or valued, or so I thought at the time.
It was not until early June that I realized how my perceptions of the year were skewed towards a negative lens. Specifically, there were three “a-ha” moments that helped me to step back even further and recognize that this year, while quite challenging, was definitely not as bad as my perceptions were leading me to believe it was. These three moments were:
- Inadvertently hearing praise
- Professional growth experiences
- My Students
Inadvertently Hearing Praise
One day I was in our department washing my hands (I kept the bathroom door open) and two department members came in the office and were speaking quite passionately about some ideas I had presented at a recent department meeting. These individuals were curious about the ideas and were mentioning how much they appreciated the efforts I was making throughout the year and how challenging it was for me. They indicated that they were not sure about some of the ideas but liked how I did not make it a top down decision and opened it up to the group to discuss and ultimately enact. Furthermore, one of them indicated that they could not imagine how challenging it would be for a new person to come in to the department and get done all that has been accomplished at that point.
In this moment I had a frozen feeling. One, I really hoped that neither of them walked into the washroom as that would have been a real awkward moment (“how long have you been there?” type of moment). Two, one of the individuals offering praise for my actions was quite vocal in opposition to my thoughts in the beginning of the year. To hear them giving praise forced me to re-assess that ongoing belief that my efforts were in vain. It forced me to begin thinking more about my mindset about the year and what beliefs I had come to and what information that was based on. It was quite humbling and exciting to hear how my interactions with the different department members influenced them. I had believed it was pretty much a ‘swing and a miss’, but that was not the case. Evidently the things I was saying and promoting were making connections with some of the department members but I was not able to recognize this earlier in the year due to my clouded lenses and distorted perceptions.
Professional Growth Experiences
As a teacher I very much value professional growth experiences as I have become addicted to learning from and with others. I call it an addiction because I cannot turn it off and am always (within reason of course) looking for ways to expand my professional knowledge and skill set. Throughout this past school year I was able to attend many conferences and speaking sessions with a variety of educational thought leaders that I have been following and learning from for many years. What I was able to take from them and apply to my practice and professional mindset has been so invaluable that it almost seems blasphemous to say that this past year was the toughest professional year of my life. Indeed, from a professional growth and development perspective, this was the greatest professional year of my life. While I did not recognize this so much in the moments of learning from the following individuals, I do see it now and am forever grateful for their wisdom. Here is a list of these incredible educational thought leaders that I was so fortunate to have learned from in various ways this past year (in no particular order):
- Michael Fullan
- Andy Hargreaves
- Tom Guskey
- Ken O’Connor
- Lee Ann Jung
- Tom Schimmer
- Damian Cooper
- Lorna Earl
- Shelley Moore
To hear any one of these individuals speak and learn from would be a professional highlight in any year. Being able to hear and connect with all of them throughout this past year has been an incredible experience and definitely one that will always be remembered. I did not realize it at the time (and definitely do now), but their words and messages have greatly enhanced my knowledge base and skill set as a professional. How I could say that this has been the “toughest professional year of my life” and not take into consideration the many lessons and expertise from this incredible list of educators, highlighted to me how clouded my perceptions were from this past year.
My Students
Entering a new school I was very excited to learn about the culture, the staff, and of course the students. I had heard good things about the students at the school I was going to but I did not anticipate the depth of character that the student body exhibited. Without a doubt, over my 14 year teacher career I have never experienced the care, compassion, and overall character of a student body like that of my new school.
During the first 3 weeks of school, when the tensions and challenges in the department began to reveal themselves, I was quite strained and unfocused in my teaching. Many of my break times in the school day (i.e. breaks between classes) were spent trying to clear up the air with colleagues and/or put out fires that were getting fanned. It seemed like the only oasis I had in the school day was in the class with the students and I was ok with that. At the end of every class students would come up to me and personally thank me for whatever it was we were learning and doing. Many would come in and greet me and ask how my day was going and/or how I was doing. Of course, I thought this might be a result of me being the new teacher in the school but it carried on throughout the year.
There were many times when I pushed and challenged my students in their learning, and while some students pushed back others accepted the challenges and excelled in their own ways. Some even worked (without requests from me) with the students who seemingly stopped trying to help them persevere when it seemed they did not want to. This is not to say that there were no low moments with the classes as indeed there were. However, what really impressed me about these students is that they bounced back quite strongly from any moments of intervention and did so willingly without much enticing or pushing from me. The community we established in our classes was something that I had not seen before in terms of how strong and consistent it was embraced.
It is not necessarily these experiences that truly stand out for me though in terms of recognizing the strength of their characters. Two separate events stand out to me as those highlighting the depth of their characters:
- Injured at work: I sustained a workplace injury that required me to be off of work for nearly 2 weeks. Throughout that time away from my students I had a number of emails from my students asking how I was doing, if I was coming back soon, and if there was anything they could do to help while I was away (help on the school front that is). Their inquiries really took me by surprise as I did not anticipate them being that concerned about a teacher. Comments like, “we miss you”, “please come back soon”, and “we hope you’re feeling better” from various students among my classes in grades 8-12 really stood out to me as samples of how incredible the student culture is at my school.
- The birth of my child: During a discussion early in the spring, I revealed to my students that my wife and I were expecting our first child in the summer. I thought it would be something said and then fall on deaf ears, but to my surprise many of them screamed for joy and began asking a marathon of questions such as “is it a boy or a girl?”, “what are you going to name him?”, and so on. I was a bit shocked that they took such an interest and once he was born they shocked me yet again.
My son was born on June 2, four weeks premature, and when I came to school and shared the news the students literally ran around screaming for joy. They all wanted to see pictures and asked a flurry of questions (one teacher even came and asked the class to quiet down). Over the next few days numerous students came to my office to give me a number of gifts they bought for my son such as stuffed dolls, clothing items and books.
It is safe to say that all of these gestures touched me beyond belief as I had never seen nor heard of students taking such an interest in the life of their teacher. It was during these moments of interactions with my students that I began to see how fortunate I was as a teacher to have such amazing people as students. I then realized that they had pretty much been that way all through the year but I had not fully acknowledged it as my mind was focused more on the tensions and challenges rather than on what was happening right in front of me. Indeed, my perception of how fortunate I was as a teacher was clouded due to my foggy lenses.
While I can see clearly now how my perceptions altered my mindset throughout the year, I am bothered by how long I took me to clean my lenses. While I thought that this year was the “toughest professional year of my life”, I can now see that indeed it was not; it was the cloudiest. In hindsight, I can see that it was actually one of the best and most inspirational professional years of my life and I wish I could have seen that earlier in the year. It has been an invaluable lesson for me and I look forward to returning to a more effective practice of reflection and analysis of my experiences.
What are your experiences around reflection? How do you manage to keep a regular practice of reflecting in times of tension and challenge? Please feel free to share your thoughts and ideas.
