learning love: a beginning

A year ago or so, I built a curriculum around what I believed it takes to lead with love, meant for educators who fight every day for our children to have access to high quality, loving education. Pieces of that curriculum have found their way into much of the teacher professional development that I do.

Teaching children is an act of love. But love, as a concept, needs to be unpacked. It can so often be misunderstood! Love can be used as an excuse to avoid the bad stuff, to give ourselves credit for the intention rather than the execution. This is the first of (hopefully) several posts on what it means, truly, to be an educator who is on the journey to lead with love.

Who are we? Who are we to do this work?

How we see this work and ourselves doing this work matters. Perhaps, when I signed up to do this work, I told myself that just the act of doing this work made me a good person. But in fact, it was my responsibility to do this work well – and that meant that unless every single child was making at least one year’s worth of growth over one year of me in the classroom, I was not doing what I owed my students.

This way of seeing the work shifted things for me deeply –

1. It gave me a sense of urgency that was challenging and productive.
2. It made it harder for me to extend myself the kindness I needed for this work to be sustainable and joyful.
3. It gave me a humility that enabled better dialogues with other teachers, parents, and children.

All three of these shifts have changed me and continue to deeply impact who I am as an educator.

It gave me a sense of urgency that was challenging and productive.

I know that I had a lot to learn, unlearn, and reflect on if I were going to do this work well. Just in my first year of classroom instruction, I realized that I needed to explore literacy, numeracy, gender, socioemotional learning, cognitive science, inclusion, sex education, time management, curriculum development, classroom management, parent engagement, assessment and feedback, and relationship building to even have a hope that every kid could be engaged in my classroom (which should go without saying did not happen).

So I build in routines to ensure I could learn as much as possible – I realized early on that I couldn’t focus on new resources or long books or podcasts if I was underslept, so I searched for the sleep hygiene routine I needed. That routine has changed a lot in the last 12 years as my knowledge, circumstances, and needs have evolved, but currently it means I turn off all my devices and clocks at 9:30 everyday so that I can focus on unplugged yoga, hot tea or miso soup, skincare, journalling, and reading before a full 9 hours a night of sleep. It isn’t perfect or perfectly consistent, but it is part of my work to center my ability to learn for my work and for our kids.

That sense of urgency has also meant that I read a lot. I take classes from folks who are more experienced or more thoughtful or who have a conceptual framework or a technique that I want to learn. It means that I schedule time in my week and in my month to reflect on all my students and teachers, that I look at my notes to make sure nothing sleeps through the cracks, that I work hard to have a system [a modified Together Teacher system] that works for me and for my work.

This sense of urgency and a sharp articulation of what the basic requirements of what my job asks of me has changed fundamentally who I am and how I approach this work. Regardless of how little teachers get paid, this is a job I signed up for and working towards every child learning as much as possible requires an urgency around how much I learn and grow every day.

It made it harder for me to extend myself the kindness I needed for this work to be sustainable and joyful.

Of course, despite how feverishly I devoured new knowledge about teaching and learning and young people, I did not reach every single child in my classroom nor could I guarantee that every child grew by a year’s worth of instruction or more. It’s hard because even as I write this, one part of my brain is thinking, ‘What even is a year’s worth? Who decided that? Based on what assumptions?’ And another part of my brain is thinking, ‘How can I admit publicly that I am basically a failed educator?! I work with students and teachers and organizational leaders on strengthening teaching and learning practices and I can’t even guarantee consistent and inclusive learning gains in my classrooms?’

But I think those twin voices illustrate my point – I am very grateful for the urgency that I have and how it contributes to my consistent commitment to learning, practice, reflection, and research. And, at the same time, having high standards for what truly counts as impactful or effective or enough makes it extraordinarily challenging for me to be kind to myself.

This is an unresolved problem – it is an ongoing journey for me to balance the high expectations I have for myself and extend myself some much-needed grace. Because it is unresolved, I don’t feel like I have wisdom much as I have half-baked thoughts. This is something I work on in therapy. I can’t unilaterally let go of my perfectionism: this is an issue where I take all the support I can get.

In addition to seeking support through therapy, conversations with friends and colleagues, and sacred reading and reflection practices, I set annual, monthly, and weekly goals for myself that are not SMART goals, but that help me identify where my head should be. These goals are really important for my efforts to be kinder to myself. Here are some examples of my annual goals over the past three years:

Practice listening to my body and my needs and meeting/addressing them. Push myself to sustain this practice in and outside my house, alone and in company, in work and in leisure, with kindness and with selfishness, in the face of judgment and in the context of support and encouragement.

Have a healthier relationship with technology. Reduce or stop multitasking.

Prioritise my own values and relationships over the needs, wants, and demands of those with more power than me.

These goals have been an attempt to encourage myself to slow down and shift my attention to who I am and what I bring with me everyday. I put effort into phrasing them in a way that feels intentional, gentle, and nonjudgmental, so I keep referring back to them without feeling unsuccessful or dejected.

These are two of the most present approaches I take, but I have tried and continue to try a lot of ways to practice kindness to myself. All of them, though, are meant to discourage defensiveness and stagnation, and instead encourage the idea that I will be better than I was yesterday and not as good as I will be tomorrow.

It gave me a humility that enabled better dialogues with other teachers, parents, and children.

Moving away from saviorism helps me see myself as part of the education system, rather than outside of it. That sense of solidarity helps me – it feels less isolating and more connected, helps me build stronger relationships with children, teachers, and parents, and leaves me more curious.

When a teacher achieves a level of growth or mastery that I am unable to make happen in my classroom, I can go and observe or find things to learn from. When a parent angrily complains about their child not learning enough, I can take their concern seriously and try to explain where I am coming from so that we can both come away from the conversation with more insight and understanding than when we went in.

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The initial questions “Who am I? Who am I to do this work?” are vast ones, with infinite answers and unending opportunities for reflection. I have written other explorations and possible answers in earlier posts, and these three reflections on my relationship with equity in education are an incomplete snapshot of things on my mind today.

No matter how fleeting and incomplete any answer will be, I think these questions are important to revisit frequently. To answer “What does it take to lead with love?”, I believe we must start from within.