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Hard Things Are Hard
It had been a really hard week at my school. An incident had shocked my students and made them fearful and frustrated. I stood in the back of the auditorium, listening to our head of school talk to the students. I sighed. I was about a year into widowhood and everything seemed hard. I didn’t need anything else on my plate. The head of school talked about the importance of holding space for each other and reaching out to teachers if students needed more support. The kids were listening, but it wasn’t an easy talk. At one point, our head of school paused his speech. I think he was attempting…
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Unaffected
Workplaces love surveys, don’t they? My school is a great place to work. As I’ve written about before, I get constant support from my colleagues, administrators and parents. I know I’m lucky to have this. So, recently, when I received a “employee satisfaction survey” I was happy to take it. I marked a lot of “extremely satisfied” and “definitely yes” answers. But then I got to this question, and I paused: “Are you able to present yourself each day in a way that is seen by our students as consistent and reliable (i.e., unaffected by outside-of-school problems)?” I didn’t have a hard time with the first part of the question,…
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The First Day of School, Part 2
I love my job. For almost a decade I’ve been teaching at my current school and I truly enjoy every day. I mean, get to teach history and government in Washington, D.C.! I can even walk to work. I do love having the summers off, but I miss my students and my identity as a teacher when I’m away from school. And so I was really happy when Labor Day arrived and school began. Last year, I missed chunks of school when Shawn was sick and then I missed two months after he died. Everyone at my school was really supportive, and I knew I was lucky to work in…
There’s No Handbook for How to Do This
