“All You Need is Love” ~The Beatles
Like all things in life, it is so easy to over complicate teaching. All too often, I find myself living in complete and total self-imposed chaos. I try to brush it off and call it organized chaos, but if I’m being completely honest, the reality is my organized chaos still feels like chaos. Hopefully I’m not alone in being guilty of being overly ambitious, a bit of a perfectionist, and becoming fixated on the least important mundane daily teacher tasks like...
aligning the student desks perfectly before each period...
organizing all my white board markers by color and upside down so they last longer...
rewriting learning targets and agendas on the white board until they look perfect...
need I go on...
I’m sure you get the full picture of my time consuming perfectionist tendencies...
It is a daily struggle to find the balance of having an organized, efficient, and sanitary classroom, but also not letting the little things take over your prep period to actually prepare to teach. I’m constantly attempting to learn how not to create my own self-imposed chaos.
When asked why do you teach, we usually all have a similar response because we love teaching. We go into this profession because we all want to make a difference. We all want to be the teacher that inspires the next generation. We all want to teach kids to love learning. How do we achieve such a goal? Like the wise tea bag advises, “Every smile is a direct achievement”. When our priority is to make learning enjoyable, we see a room full of smiles and magic happens!
Cheers to realizing The Beatles had it spot on, “All you need is love”. Take a few moments to relax and enjoy your tea. You deserve it.
