Learning to Forgive and Learning to Forget (For now!)

It comes as no secret to any professional that is “on the go” that well-being can take a passenger seat in an instant. We focus our sights on our goals and generate a series of steps to achieve those goals in manageable, bite sized proportions. We understand what a “bite-size” is; a chunk of our goal that lets us focus on one thing at a time (since we’re awful multitaskers) and gives us an appreciable sense of accomplishment when we strike it off the list. Here’s the catch, though: we forget to factor our mental health into the frame quite often, and we’re really guilty when we do it. Forgetting to create check-ins on our mental health can compromise your mental state and create unforeseen consequences, both mental and physical. It can begin to manifest as small things like clenching your teeth or forgetting minor details and evolve into more sinister things (such as heart issues or the development of a mental disorder).

As a pre-service teacher, I am preparing myself to become a full-time working professional in the field of my dreams. Thus, it is imperative that I begin to hone my current strategies and understand who I am and what I should reasonably expect of myself. The challenge of this assignment was to reflect on my current well-being and create a plan to maintain or improve my well-being. Thus, I mapped out some of the strengths that I have and, in all fairness to myself, looked to see some of the weaknesses or challenges that I currently face.

MY STRENGTHS

These are the places I have noticed that I have an easier time navigating in most cases. By no means is it an exhaustive list, though.

I can read a room in an instant – I know when my class has troubles with a topic or if they are feeling disengaged from the get-go. I have found in my experience that this helps me approach problems before they begin and prevent any spirals before they become unmanageable.
To build on the point above; I can read body language to help me understand where individual student understandings are (i.e. head tilts, shifting of weight, disengaging). This works in most cases, but not all (read as: students with exceptionalities can have different behaviours that must be read differently than others)
I understand that nothing is ever personal unless it personally involves me & have ease in detaching myself from conflicts. This one is huge – I read The Four Agreements sometime after finishing my undergraduate degree and it really helped me rationalize a lot of the conflicts in my life.
I have a charisma that lets me navigate difficult conversations during class time, and I understand how to rework scenarios and/or content-related problems to better explain them to my students.
Finally, I can understand my part in the conflicts that I am a part of and have developed the ability to reflect on the events of the day with some degree of clarity.

I have thus discovered that I am able to get a good grasp of what is going on in my classroom at any time, and do a fairly good job of leaving my professional life before I go home. Like I mentioned before, however, I should be fair to myself and take some time to outline where I struggle and could benefit, so that I can develop a strategy that works best for me.

MY CHALLENGES

I tend to look into the subtext of a lot of things and actively search for deeper meanings in a lot of the conversations that I have. I have noticed that this leads me to worry, doubt myself and second-guess many of my interactions, and get stuck in a loop of reflection when I should be focused more on the present and future (eating, planning lessons, socializing with friends… You get the idea).
I love to be a part of different social justice initiatives and find ways to create opportunities for direct action (because its part of being an active/participatory citizen), so when I feel that I have failed to create a safe learning environment and/or lack peer support in these initiatives, I am quick to frustrate.
This one is common, but important, nonetheless. I have one brain and will eventually be in charge of four classes a day. I love to plan but can overclock very quickly! I can identify that this is a problem that can become a nonissue later on in my career, but that doesn’t mean I can stare at the light and expect it to pull me there by itself.

To sum – I think a lot of the problems I focus on happen in my work life and arise from an inability to step back and understand that I am only one person with 24 hours in their singular day. Thus, the solution that I identify should come up find a way to address this and re-contextualize my concerns when I can visit them in a different headspace.

THE PLAN

I’ll start this bit with a disclaimer: it is fantastic that people are learning about the benefits of yoga and are recognizing that teacher well-being can take a nosedive at any given point. However, yoga is not the be-all and end-all of mental health, and we have to be careful of how often we prescribe it to people that are struggling. After perusing articles on the topic (which kept discussing the juggernaut that is yoga) I finally landed on the decision that if I am to pick up a practice to sustain my well-being, it should be something that suits my specific needs.

I Know What You Think of MeI was doing some pre-bedtime reading and stumbled upon an article titled by Tim Kreider, which talked about how we tend to obscure things about ourselves and stay ignorant to given information as a means of sheltering us from criticisms. I then realized that (amongst a host of other things) I would need to find a means of keeping track of my days to revisit them in a different headspace or with a better understanding of the context. Now, my local Chapters and I know very well that I cannot keep a diary to save my life. Thus, I resolved to keep two jars, labelled as “Goods” and “Bads,” and I took the time at the end of each day to write out a few of the things that worried me or made me feel warm. Ultimately, since it was a project for my eyes only and was centered around my own day, I felt comfortable writing down whatever needed to be said. (As a side note: this let me know what had to be addressed immediately and what could be “pushed off” with reasonable abandon) Then, at the end of the week, I’d take the sheets and immediately see what resolutions were offered – did the person of interest apologize or correct their actions? Did I properly reach out to the people I needed to, and if I haven’t, can I make the time in the upcoming week to do so?

(I would like to point out that this photo is sadly, not mine. I couldn't upload a photo of my own jars for some weird reason. Thanks, phone camera!)

Now, you’ve read a hefty amount and want to know: did this strategy work for me? I love to tell a good story, and in equal part know that you’ve read a huge story already, so I’ll sum it up: yes. I gave myself the chance to forgive myself for past mistakes and bad moods and noticed that I started to ask questions that I never asked myself before. I began to recognize the trends where my mood picked up and dipped and started to plan ways to emphasize or mitigate those interactions in the upcoming week. I was given the chance to recontextualize the issues and use new information that I got from the remainder of the week to get a clearer picture of what was going on.

Now, I’d be a fool to pretend that keeping a jar of your pros and problems is the magna carta to liberate the problems of the mind (because I’m me and you’re you, and I will do everything in my power to keep it that way). This method gave me a chance to create a small ritual for myself and take a pause to understand the forces that were in play to make or break my day. I suspect that most recommendations to maintaining well-being (including yoga!) stem from this concept, so it’s pretty exciting to be a part of it all. It also let me practice resilience, in the sense that I was able to bounce back and keep up with the demands of each of my days with the understanding that time will change things and I too, should keep up with it all. It also helped me move past the deficit point of view and focus on bigger and better things. Dwelling on the past cannot help me learn about my future but learning from the past provides me with a clearer future.

It was a pleasure to take part in this and discover a new way to figure things out. Ultimately, I stand by my original statement: we as teachers do not spend enough time keeping ourselves together before we focus on keeping our classrooms together. It is unfortunate that I never considered certain things as an issue in my life for this long, but I will take this chance to celebrate the fact that I started and place it in the “Good” jar. I hope you’ll find the power to do the same!

The works that I referenced while writing this post are as follows:

Gonzalez, J. Why It’s Hard for Teachers to Take Care of Themselves (and 4 Ways to Start). Accessed from https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/teacher-self-care/

Hurlington, K. (2010). Bolstering resilience in student teachers as protective factors. Research into Practice. Accessed from http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/literacynumeracy/inspire/research/ww_bolstering_students.pdf

Kreider, T. (2013 June 15). I Know What You Think of Me [Opinion Article]. Retrieved from

https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/15/i-know-what-you-think-of-me/.

Meldrum, L., Venn, D., & Kutcher, S. (2009). Mental Health in schools: How teachers have the power to make a difference. Health & Learning Magazine, 8, 3-5. Accessed from https://www.ctf-fce.ca/Research-Library/Issue8_Article1_EN.pdf

Image credits, in the order they appear:

https://blogs.ufv.ca/health/mental-illness-awareness-week-on-chilliwack-campus/

https://flirtingwithcreativity.com/2013/08/19/good-thoughts-jar/

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