Why I'm Starting

I just finished my 5th year of teaching, and ironically, as I've taught longer, I've felt more overwhelmed by the things I can and should learn and master.

I teach 7th grade reading, writing, and social studies, so I have a lot of academic components to master. I have a degree in special education, and I feel like there's so much more I could be doing to support my struggling learners and to push my advanced students. I have read and learned about supportive Social Emotional Learning, but I feel over my head when it comes to actually implementing it in my classroom.

And this past year crushed me in a lot of ways. I had a tough class, and I felt completely incapable of supporting my kids in the ways that they deserved.

This summer, I told myself I would take baby steps to make next year better.

One of those baby steps was to sign up for a writing class through TeachWrite Academy. We're working on building writing habits as teachers so that we can better support our students as writers. 

Last week, we had to write a letter to an obstacle that is keeping us from developing a daily writing habit. 

I wrote to feeling like I didn't have an end goal or purpose because I don't have much of value to say. 

Here's what I wrote:

Dear not having an end goal/purpose,

I'm not sure what you feel so important. I exercise even though I don't have a race on the calendar. I read because I love learning, not because I have a test to take or a paper to write.

But writing without a purpose feels frivolous. I feel like I get to avoid the hard work of research or revision because I'm not really producing anything.

I know that writing for writing's sake is valuable, at least to me. It makes me feel more grounded, and I do like looking back on old journal entries.

I kind of wish I had an end project so that I would feel more committed to writing. And I guess I could come up with one, but maybe I also just need to embrace writing as a habit.

Maybe if I had a writing habit, a bigger idea would come. But maybe it wouldn't.

Then, we wrote down what we would say to a friend who had this same problem. That's when I kind of had to shake my head at how obvious my advice would be to someone else, even though it hadn't occurred to me at all when reflecting on this as a personal problem. 

Writing doesn't have to be for an audience. It can just be for you. It can be a tool you use to develop the values you want to have - kindness, empathy, and knowledge. 

It can be a way for you to see patterns in your life that you want to change. It can be a way to be more present and attentive to the world around you.

It can be a way to relax, a way to connect with your students, and a way to understand what's working on what's not working. 

And, maybe, through developing a writing habit, you'll come up with an idea that excites you, or you'll find a piece of something bigger that feels like it might be worth sharing. 

I came out of that exercise feeling more committed to keeping a daily journal, one that I would never share with anyone else.

As the course continued that day, though, we talked about teacher blogs. I was the only one in the group without a blog, and I'm also the newest teacher in the group. I expressed my anxieties - I don't really have anything to say about teaching. I'm so new to this that it feels kind of big-headed to write about teaching when there are so many people who know way more than I do. I'm maybe a little scared of putting ideas out there. 

I didn't express it well enough in the moment, but I was blown away by the kindness and encouragement from the other ladies in the class. I'm overwhelmed by how much I have to learn. But, again and again, the other teachers in this group encouraged me to start a blog. Some said it was the best way to connect with other teachers. Some said I do have things to say, precisely because I'm a new teacher. And some said that to be a good teacher, you need to reflect, and developing a daily writing habit is one of the best ways to ensure that I'm constantly reflecting.

They convinced me, so here I am. 

I have a lot of reflecting to do on this past year of teaching, and I'm excited to do a lot of reflecting in the moment when I meet my new class of 7th graders in August. The reasons to develop a daily writing habit and this blog are there, so here's to following through.