I had an education professor when I was an undergrad who told us that going into the classroom should always make one a little nervous or even a little scared.
Not anxious and ready to throw up.
Not hyperventilating.
Just butterflies. A little tickle in your stomach. A hint of something new and exciting. A desire to make sure that you don’t fail the learners in front of you.
I don’t know when it happened, but at some point over the last two years, I lost the butterflies. I loved my job. My kids made me smile and amazed me every day. My colleagues were great. But it was all starting to feel routine.
Knowing It’s Time for a Change
I love teaching special ed and being a learning specialist because there are always interesting problems to solve. Looking for the how all aspects of who a student is and how they learn come together, and figuring out how to support the areas of challenge and leverage areas of strength in order to support the student in the classroom. How do we bridge the skills that the student does have with the skills they need to engage in what’s happening in the classroom? But it started to feel like the same problems over and over again. Even the novel problems started to feel like rote. They were variations on puzzles I had solved before.
I was doing my job (and I’d go so far as to say doing my job pretty well), but I was just doing my job. I wasn’t phoning it in. But I wasn’t growing as an educator in the way I wanted to. I was trying new things with my students, but doing new things didn’t spark my curiosity and imagination the way they once did. I’d read articles about burn-out. Burn-out wasn’t the problem. It was absolutely, without a doubt time for a change.
Making the Change
With the exception of two years as a K-6 Literacy Coach, I’ve done the same job almost my entire career: Middle School Learning Specialist. I’ve almost always focused on pull-out instruction with a smattering of push-in and coaching. It’s been primarily focused on reading and writing, with some executive functioning and math thrown in. I liked what I was doing, but as much as I loved teaching reading and writing, the math and executive functioning pieces were the most interesting.
A lot of my time last school year was spent figuring out what my next step would be.
Would it be:
- Leadership?
- Would it be to stay where I was and try to create new ways to work and new ways to grow?
- The same thing somewhere else?
- Teaching something new?
- Leaving teaching entirely and go into ed tech?
- Trying to find a Clinical Professor position and throw myself into teacher ed?
Honestly, that’s part of why I didn’t blog much last year. That type of self-reflection was better suited to non-public writing and thinking. And I was lucky that an opportunity appeared that was the change I was looking for–new grade-level, new challenges, new subject matter, and an administrator I knew I wanted to work with. It doesn’t always work out that way. I’m excited to be starting work in a few weeks as the K-4 Learning Specialist at my school’s lower school, developing their math intervention (RtI) program. I’m definitely excited for the change and I have absolutely found my butterflies (even if some of those butterflies are a little bit of worry that I’ll miss Middle School).
So, if you’re going back to school this fall and you’re realizing that you don’t feel those butterflies in your stomach, here are some things you can do.
1. Self-reflection is key
Self-reflection is one of the best ways that we have as educators to check in on our own practice.
I was in a good position. I liked my job and I didn’t need a change, but I wanted one and knew things would be better for me professionally if I had new challenges. That meant I could apply to jobs and carefully consider what I was doing. If I hadn’t been checking in with my own thoughts and feelings about my work, I might have been in a place where I absolutely needed to leave or had become burned out.
2. Take stock of your strengths, areas for growth, and goals
Really think about them. Journal. Make lists. Answer the questions honestly.
- What are the things that still excite you about your job?
- Where do you know you need to grow and how do you want to make those changes?
- What new challenges would you like to embrace?
Knowing the answers to these questions will help you find the right position, make the changes you need to make in your current position, and have conversations about your next steps.
3. Talk to trusted colleagues, administrators, and mentors
Talk to people.
If you have administrators that will be supportive, talking to them can be very helpful. I was able to talk to my principal and assistant principal. They are definitely administrators who want to support their teachers’ growth and helped me to make that happen, even if their school wasn’t the right place to do it. I also talked options over with a mentor from graduate school and a few trusted colleagues. Talking to people who know you and know your field well can help you figure out what kind of change is the right kind of change.
4. Look at what’s out there
Looking isn’t the same as choosing to leave or deciding that change is a definite outcome. Looking at job options as they start to appear in late January and as the continue to pop up through the winter, and then sifting through the many options in the spring can help you to see what’s out there. It can also help you negotiate new responsibilities and duties that might be that challenge that you’re looking for.
5. Be kind to yourself
It’s easy to look at Education Twitter or education blogs or (especially) Teacher Instagram and think that everything is perfect for everyone else. We’re encouraged to share the victories and not always encouraged to share the struggles. Even in this post while I’m striving to be as honest as possible, there are still parts of the decision making process that I glossed over because they weren’t things I wanted to share publicly (and that’s OK–not everything needs to be published).
Everyone has times when they question where they are.
Everyone has been in a position where a teaching position just wasn’t working for them any more.
It’s OK. You’ll figure it out.
Are you feeling the butterflies as you prepare to go back to school? What challenges are you excited to embrace this year?
