No time to read? Listen instead!
If you’re an educator, getting ready for the beginning of the school year is on your mind. With so much up in the air due to Coronavirus, this year’s opening is complicated by contingency plans. Will we greet our students in-person or will our opening salvos be conducted via Zoom?
As of this moment, my school is planning a brick and mortar opening on August 11 which means that readying the physical space where students will gather to think and learn is foremost on my mind.
When I began to think about how to tackle this challenge, my first instinct was…to take a nap. Seriously. I haven’t set up my own classroom in twenty-one years and I couldn’t even fathom where to begin.
But, I resisted my urge to go to bed and instead, decided to start with books. First, I raided my sons’ bookshelves for their old middle school favorites. I found the Percy Jackson series, all seven of the Harry Potter books, The Hunger Games, Divergent, Diary of a Wimpy Kid.
A very nice beginning, I thought to myself.
Then, I went to my garage and began to open the bins I had stored there. I cracked open the spines of brand new books that publishers have sent over the years. I got lost reading the blurbs on the backs. I felt inspired. Mentally, I began to organize my collection. I imagined bins labeled Environment, Civil Rights, World War II, Graphic Novels, Classics.
Though I didn’t count how many books I culled from different corners of my home, there were roughly 500 books in my foyer waiting to find a space in the library of my new classroom.
Great, I thought. Next stop–the classroom. In my head, moving the books from my foyer to the classroom and putting them on shelves felt like a manageable task.
So, the next day, I loaded up my car and headed to my school. When I arrived, I cheerfully opened up the door and saw…books. Lots and lots and lots of books. Now, normally, a sight such as this would make me positively giddy but upon seeing the no less than ten boxes of books that had been delivered to my room, I felt that tight, tense, choked up feeling in the back of my throat…and again, the sudden urge for a nap. What felt manageable prior to my arrival, now felt…absolutely paralyzing.
As is often the case with teaching–and life–the tasks demanding our attention have a way of adding up to feel insurmountable. When this happens, like me, you might feel your flight instinct kick in. While it can be helpful to take that nap from time to time when you feel overwhelmed, avoiding the things on our to do list for too long can amplify our stress and anxiety. In those moments of overwhelm when we have to face what stands before us, I find the following three steps to be helpful:
- Stop. Recognize how you’re feeling. If you feel the urge to judge yourself for feeling this, resist that urge. Whatever you’re feeling, it’s okay! You’re human. Humans feel stuff.
- Take a deep breath. Breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth. Do this again. Do this again and again and again until you feel refocused on the moment in front of you.
- Decide what you can do in this moment. If you’re overwhelmed by the new curriculum resource you’re expected to use, read the first page of the teacher manual. If you are trying to plan the lesson you’re going to do for your observation, sit at the computer, and type the objective. Don’t think about being done. Just think about one thing that you can do right here, right now.
In my moment of overwhelm, the one thing that I could do after I had breathed my way through my anxiety, was open a box. And that’s what I did. Then, I took out one book. Then another. And slowly but surely, I made my way through all of the books in that one box. I didn’t finish going through all the books in all of the boxes, but I did finish sorting those books in that box. And that gave me a sense of accomplishment and the courage to continue.
Overwhelm comes from trying to process the enormity of the big picture. In these moments, we cannot see the pathway to the end we seek. However, completing one small task or taking one small action can illuminate the path forward. And you will get there. And so will I. Book by book by book.
