"When we learn how to teach, we must also consider what it will feel like to teach."
Chapter 4
Chapter 4 explores the advice of “Don’t take it personally” that is so often thrown around and used in education, but which is so very difficult to follow. This chapter will share why teachers take certain situations personally, including examples from the author, and what the author has learned through introspective awareness and others’ guidance on how to soften the feeling when situations are taken personally. The author shares personally and authentically how her teaching career would have started differently had she understood her “shadows” and that “behavior is communication,” and how understanding these concepts has been paramount in her emotional success as a teacher.
Questions:
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Consider a time in your classroom life when you took a situation personally. This happens to all teachers. Why did you take this circumstance personally and how did this make you feel? If you could go back and relive this experience, what advice would you give to yourself now?
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What are some of the “shadows” you have in your personal life that may show themselves in your professional life? For the author, one such shadow is people pleasing. How has your shadow affected your teaching and emotional outcomes. How do you think you can continue to work through this?
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How are you a better person and teacher now than what you were when you first started? What is one example of hard-won wisdom in your life?
Quotes:
“In the classroom setting, some reasons why students behave the way they do may have to do with us as the teacher or our content, or it may have nothing to do with us at all.”
“Teachers matter, too. Teachers are human, too. It matters that teachers are emotionally strong when they start teaching and that they are nurtured as they continue teaching.”
“Teaching will expose one’s personal ‘triggers,’ even if we think it will not.”
“Emotionally strong teachers, who feel seen and supported are teachers who will stay in their teaching job.”
