You can be ANYTHING........

I have a very dear friend who grew up amazingly different than I did. Not only geographically did we grow up different, but we were raised by two extremely different families. My parents were married six months shy of 50 years before my Mom’s death. Her parents divorced when she was 2 leaving her an only child compared to me having 2 siblings. Her mother worked full time as an accountant in a huge cooperation. My mom worked part time jobs when I was little and only went to full time employment when my younger brother was around 10.  She attended church at Christmas and Easter while I was in church every time the doors were unlocked. She was taught a woman was equal to a man while my mother taught me that the man was the head of the household and while you have a voice, the husband ultimately was responsible for major family decisions.

Now, the way I’ve described this makes it sound as if one of us had it better than the other. This is not the case. I adore this friend. She is a 2^nd sister to me. I adore her mother. In fact, when my own mother passed away, my friend’s Mom was the 2^nd person I called.  Even with our crazy different backgrounds, we’ve ended up living relatively similar adult lives. We both married in our mid 20s, are still married, had 2 children, are both educators, and are both extremely busy with our kids, our churches, our careers, and our passions.  I was talking with her late one night last week. She was down. She was extremely stressed out. She was moved into a new position in her company with a not so friendly boss, her youngest son is giving her some minor teenage trouble, her husband received a promotion and it is requiring a lot of travel, she gives and gives at her church, she is a den Mom, her mom’s health is declining and she is her caregiver, and her husband’s very troubled brother has moved into their garage apartment.  I listened to her vent for several minutes and I asked her why she felt the need to do it all.

She laughed and said, “I am the daughter of a feminist.” We were taught that. I listened some more while thinking about this feminist thing. Most of my friends are the first-generation daughters of the feminist movement. This movement taught woman that we could be anything we wanted to be. But as I listened to my friend, my friend who was raised by a real feminist, I realized something. The feminist movement taught us we could do anything, but I am afraid the message we heard was we must do everything.

I could not help but think about our work here at school.  (Sorry to the men who work in our schools, this may be message not intended for you) Men tend to do this better than we women, but it may help you understand us a little better. We stress ourselves out by trying to do it all when in fact what we tend to do is do none of it well.  I was in a meeting with a teacher last week who discussed her math lesson. She talked about the manipulatives, the worksheet, the video, the timer, the game she’d created, and the cool exit slip. What she failed to mention was when she was teaching the content. She was so focused on doing everything-manipulatives, technology, independent practice, closing the lesson that she forgot the most important part-teaching! 

Remember-at the end of the day-what is most important-build relationships with your students. Build their trust, build their confidence, built their character. Teach them. Yes, be innovative, yes teach like your hair is on fire, but don’t forget to TEACH them. And ask for help. If you are not willing to learn, no one can help you. If you are determined to learn, no one can stop you.   Stop trying to be everything and be great at the one thing that we went into this job for-TEACHING.  Focus relentlessly on being the best teacher your students ever had or ever will have.  Does this mean that your bulletin board may not get changed every month or even this quarter? Does this mean your weekly newsletter will not be fancy? Does this mean your lesson plans may be sloppy? Does this mean you may be late turning in your SLO (shhhh!!!)? 

You know my friend’s Mom taught her correctly. You can be anything you want to be? So why not choose to be the best teacher your children have ever or will ever have?