Teacher Wellness Matters
Do you want to know the real reason I started using the Modern Classroom model?
Because I was drowning.
Okay, not literally. But that's how teaching felt. I would stay up late planning a lesson, go into school and teach my butt off, and come home feeling like that still wasn't enough. I'd fallen short - again. I gave everything I had and my students still weren't getting it.
At first I blamed my students. But as I got to know them, I realized that it wasn't their fault. They came to school wanting to learn, but even my most carefully planned lessons weren't meeting their needs. Some were ahead and bored, others behind and lost, and a few not even in class at all.
Then I blamed myself. My lessons weren't reaching all my students, so I was inadequate. There was some value in critiquing my lessons - I certainly had plenty of room to improve them - but doubting my capacities and commitment wasn't productive. After all, I was there for the right reasons, and working as hard as I could.
Eventually I realized that the real problem wasn't my students' attitudes nor my abilities. It was the way my classroom actually operated. I was trying to meet 25 unique students' unique learning needs with a single lesson each day. That's impossible! I may have been trained to think otherwise... but it is.
Blended, self-paced, mastery-based teaching wasn't a panacea: I still struggled, and my students did, too. Teaching is hard! But once I stopped lecturing and started working more closely with my students, I regained a lot of confidence - and my students did too. I could leave school each day with my head held high.
As former teachers who now serves educators like you, my co-founder Kareem and I think a lot about teacher wellness. Teacher wellness is so, so, so important. And we think one of the biggest things we can do to promote wellness is to transform the way that teachers' daily experiences feel. If we can make teaching itself more enjoyable, and more sustainable, then educators like you can go home happier every day.
That's why, in the past two weeks, we've been proud to join two leading advocates for teacher wellness, to share the ways in which we believe the Modern Classroom model can contribute to teachers' wellbeing.
3 Sustainable, Enjoyable Steps to Meet Every Student’s Needs
First, I joined Emily Hemmingson, founder of the Teacher Wellness Center, for a Zoom conversation about 3 sustainable, enjoyable steps to meet every student's needs. Emily has been an inspiration to me for many years, and I was honored to share with her my own struggles as a teacher - as well as the ways in which the Modern Classroom model helped me overcome some of them.
3 Practices to Give You More One-on-One Time with Students
Next, Kareem joined Angela Watson, founder of Truth for Teachers, for a podcast discussing 3 practices to give teachers more one-on-one time with students. Kareem and Angela are both former of educators who have inspired thousands of their peers to teach in more sustainable ways, and it was a privilege to listen in on their conversation about what teaching and learning can be.
If you've ever felt like I used to - frustrated, exhausted, burned out - then I want to thank you. You're giving a tremendous amount of yourself (perhaps more than is healthy) so that the learners you serve, and the world we all inhabit together, can have a brighter future. For that, I am deeply grateful to you.
