Читать книгу Riding the Wave - Jeremy S. Adams - Страница 16

PART 1
the self

It’s never overreacting to ask for what you want and need.

—AMY POEHLER

It’s the stuff of an overwrought Hollywood screenplay.

A young man on the cusp of graduating from college has no idea what he wants to do with his life. On Thanksgiving break of his senior year, his elder sister unexpectedly passes away of congestive heart failure. He returns to school to take his final exams emotionally broken, empty, and at a loss. As he walks home by himself from class one afternoon, it hits him as hard as any idea has ever hit him in his entire life. He stops walking. He looks up at the broken clouds that have small sunrays poking through them. Suddenly, time folds in on itself, and he knows—truly, soulfully knows—what he wants to do with his life.

I used to tell this story—my story—to my students to let them know that I consider my job to be a calling, not a simple profession. “You know what happiness is?” I used to ask them. “It’s knowing you are exactly where you are supposed to be in this life. It’s the absence of daydreaming about being somewhere else and about doing something else.”

I stopped telling this story to my teenage students. I figured either they would think I was being dramatic or they wouldn’t know how it applied to them. Over the years, though, I have noticed that most teachers have their own tales to tell about their unique paths to the teaching profession. Their stories show that most teachers consider their craft to be an elemental part of their being. Teaching anchors them. It largely defines them. You can take them out of the classroom, but you can’t take the classroom out of them. Even when they retire, they permanently bear the teacher label. However, when teachers experience constant change in education, it can place strain on their sense of self.

This reality raises a significant, perhaps even decisive, question about the teaching profession: How do challenges affect the teacher label and teachers’ deep-seated, long-held belief that this is a calling?

It is imperative that we identify the origin and scope of the challenges facing teachers in the 21st century and determine how we, as conscientious professionals, can proactively confront these challenges. This process is valid and important no matter where a teacher finds him- or herself in a teaching career. It can help the new teacher in creating a professional identity; the established teacher in remaining relevant and effective in the classroom; and the nearing-retirement teacher in finishing on a positive note and extending his or her legacy. But we can achieve these ideals only if we are permitted—by ourselves and by others—to ride the wave of change by practicing self-care and giving proper attention to our well-being. When we understand the issues affecting teachers and develop healthy habits to neutralize them, it will ground us, sustain us, and allow us to confidently step into the classroom better prepared to serve students.

Ultimately, it is painful when teachers disengage from a profession they once celebrated. In the following pages, we’ll understand why this schism emerges and, more to the point, what to do about it. It is natural as a teaching career progresses to experience decay or even boredom. But what an environment of unrelenting change unleashes is something closer to burnout and despair, propagating a feeling of alienation from one’s own unique motivations for having entered the profession. To prevent such an outcome, a teacher must both notice the wave and learn how to ride it.