Mindset shifts for a happier and more sustainable school year
It is no secret that we as teachers have a tough job, and it seems like our work gets more challenging and complicated as the years go by. With teacher burnout rates rising, an exodus of novice and seasoned teachers alike leaving the profession in droves, and a dearth of new teaching candidates entering the field, it does at times feel like our beloved profession is in some serious trouble.
With all of these realities in mind, I think it is more important than ever that we as teachers rally around each other and find a safe space to discuss ways in which we can bolster our own mental health, self care, and overall feelings of satisfaction in our careers.
Over the years, my mindset around teaching has shifted dramatically. I have always been a perfectionist, a type-A chronic overachiever, and unrelenting people pleaser…and I feel like many who end up in the teaching field can probably relate. At the start of my career, I was miserable: I worked pretty much around the clock, nothing that I produced ever met my impossibly high standards, and I lived in a constant state of self-doubt about my own abilities as a World Language teacher. Imposter syndrome was real, and every day I went to work feeling like I was a fraud, feeling like I was never doing enough to please my administrators, and feeling like I was utterly failing my students.
Thanks to boatloads of therapy, introspection, and research in the fields of mental health and psychology, I began to adopt a handful of mindset shifts to help me feel happier and healthier at work and in my life. These mindset shifts included changing my perspective on our role and responsibilities as classroom teachers, setting more realistic expectations for myself and my students, and replacing negative and harmful beliefs with more positive, gentler ones.
If you feel like teaching is this heavy, all-consuming profession that throws your life out of balance in uncomfortable and unsustainable ways, continue reading to learn about the mindset shifts I implemented to feel more at peace in this profession.
There are 125 of them, and only 1 of you.
If you teach middle or high school like I do, you probably have at least 125 students. Some years I’ve had as many as 150. And even if you don’t have that many—let’s say you have really small classes of 10 students and teach 5 classes…that’s still 50 students, which is still quite a lot! And on the flip side, if you teach elementary World Language, you might see all of the students in your school at some point throughout the school year…or maybe you work in multiple schools, so you’re seeing what? 300? 400? 500+ students?
No matter how you look at it, we’re outnumbered. We will never be able to hold space for all of our students. We will never be able to get through to all of them and provide them with the unique, individualized resources they need to thrive in our classes. This is a systemic issue that unfortunately none of us is equipped to solve. We are teachers; we are not miracle workers.
Understanding this reality has been so freeing for me. I put my best foot forward every single day and try to do the best that I can with what I have, but I have disillusioned myself of this notion that I can or should or need to be everything to every single one of my students. I am outnumbered, and so I need to do my best to make an impact wherever I can while not beating myself up over the students I may just never be able to reach.
Sometimes, you’re just not their cup of tea.
I used to take it personally when I suspected—or when they outright revealed—that students did not like me or my class. Similarly, when students refused to put forth effort in my class, failed to do homework and study for assessments, I felt like their disengagement was somehow a reflection of my own failure in making my class as entertaining and interesting as possible for them.
The reality is that your students will exist on a spectrum: you will have students that love you and your class; you will have students that like you and your class; you will have students that are indifferent to you and your class; and yes, there will be students that pretty much hate you and your class. And that’s okay. We have a duty to teach ALL of our students the best that we can, but we need to learn to navigate the discomfort of having a handful (or more!) of students who are just simply not into learning a new language.
Two things can be true at once: you can have students in your room who are not loving their experience AND you can be doing the best that you can. Sometimes, you’re just not their cup of tea… and that’s okay.
Instead of aiming for all of your students to like you, instead try aiming to have your students respect you.
We’re all in this together!
I cannot overstate the importance of community and collaboration to keep this profession sustainable. As World Language teachers, we may not be part of a department or team in our building/district. We may not have common planning time with team teachers. We may be displaced in multiple buildings across the district. All of these are challenges that make it hard to stay connected.
When you have trusted colleagues that you can collaborate with, you not only get to share the instructional burden of resource and assessment creation, but you also create a bond in which you can talk through issues that may be arising in your classes and… let’s be honest, you create a space to vent.
Our job is hard, but it becomes almost unmanageable when we bottle up our frustrations. Having a trusted colleague or team to whom you can vent is essential in maintaining your emotional and mental health, because let’s face it… as fellow teachers, they just get it. They “get it” in ways that non-teacher family members, spouses, friends just simply cannot.
Find your tribe. And if you can’t find like-minded teachers in your building, look elsewhere. What about your district? A neighboring district? A teacher in a different county within your state? A teacher friend you make online (maybe someone’s Reddit post resonates with you, or you find a teacher-themed Discord, or maybe there’s a Twitter community that attracts like-minded peers who may be teaching your content area from all over the world!).
It’s really not about the content…
So many of us become World Language teachers because we are so incredibly passionate about the language(s)/culture(s) that we teach. And this may be a hard pill for some of you to swallow, but I have learned that my impact in my students’ lives goes waaayyyy beyond the linguistic, organizational, intercultural, and studentship skills I may be teaching them.
Realistically speaking, unless your students move to a country in which the target language is predominantly spoken, major in your language in college, or make a truly concerted effort to maintain their language skills once they have left your class, the reality is that a majority of our students will experience language atrophy. The old adage, if you don’t use it, you lose it is particularly true with languages.
And so then the question becomes: aside from teaching language and teaching about culture, what is our purpose? For me, I have found that my teaching day becomes infinitely more rewarding, satisfying, and fulfilling when I make the students whom I’m teaching my priority, thereby relegating curriculum and instruction to the second spot on my list of priorities.
You hear a lot of administrators talk about the importance of “establishing rapport” and “building relationships,” and while it’s kind of nauseating to hear them talk about that, there is a fundamental truth to what they’re saying: students will learn best from teachers who are approachable and who have made an effort to get to know them.
I’ll make a blog post down the line about ways to build and maintain classroom rapport, but if there’s one tiny action step I’d recommend that you take, it would be this: think about one five-minute activity you can incorporate into your lesson tomorrow to get to know your students better. Try it. You might find, like me, that this practice of connecting with students in meaningful ways can help stave off burnout and reignite a dwindling passion in teaching.
Use your days!
I talk about this often on this blog: your sick days and personal days are part of your compensation package; therefore, you are not only entitled to them, but you are leaving money on the table when you don’t use them. Not a very smart business decision!
From a practical standpoint, there are so many reasons why taking a day off can be beneficial: physical health (Get your teeth cleaned! Go for that eye check-up! Get the routine bloodwork! Book that doctor’s appointment you’ve been prolonging!); mental health; family reasons; rest & recovery; administrative tasks (car issues, work being done inside our homes tax season, all of the things!), etc.
I think during my first year of teaching, I might have used maybe 3 or 4 sick days the entire year. I was so paranoid that if I took my days, my admin might not rehire me the following year. But looking back on that first year teacher, I know I wasn’t happy that year because I wasn’t taking care of myself. I showed up to work when I was sick, I let my real-life responsibilities fall by the wayside, I worked through fatigue and exhaustion, and I wasn’t willing to take off when my family needed me.
The way in which I operated my first year is and was completely unsustainable. We are teachers, but we are also human beings. We have spouses, family, kids, friends, pets… our lives are multifaceted, and so the thought that we should use as few days as possible is simply unrealistic.
And if you’re worried about your students, don’t fret. They will be fine. Find a quick and easy sub activity on TpT for them to complete when you’re out, and upon your return to school, pick back up where you left off.
Need tips for sub plans? Check out my blog post, Simplifying World Language Sub Plans: A Guide to Streamlining for Emergencies and Illnesses.
I hope that this blog post has resonated with you in some way. I’d love for you to share in the comment section below some of the mindset shifts that you have had over the years which have led to happier, and more sustainable school years for you.
Happy language teaching,
~ Michael
