Ashley Blackwelder March/April Blog: Routman Ch. 12, You Only Have So Much Time

I loved this chapter, and I wish I had read it about 10 years ago, when I thought being a dedicated teacher meant both arriving at and leaving school in the dark each day.  As a new teacher, I knew that I would have to invest some time in my lesson planning. I wanted to create meaningful experiences for my students, and I was stubborn about doing it all on my own.  Without a selection of "tried and true" resources, I knew that I'd be putting in a few extra hours at the beginning of my career.  As a young and single teacher, I wasn't taking time away from a family at home.  It was a stage of my life when I knew I had the extra time to focus on being a good teacher, so that's what I did.  I did my best, as Routman says, to "live an interesting life," but I also exhausted myself.  I assumed that, at some point, I would "figure out" how other teachers managed to leave at 3:00 each day.
Looking back on those earlier years as a teacher, I don't regret trying to figure things out on my own or investing the time to create some really great lessons and units that have served me--and hopefully my students--well.  However, I do wish that I had understood that teaching is ALWAYS going to require me to grow, improve, and make changes.  I didn't need to take on the impossible task of making everything "perfect" in a year.  It's never going to be perfect--and even if I could make things perfect for one class, I'd get a new group in the next year and I'd have to make changes in order to be effective for them.  At some point, I got the idea that effective, organized teachers could have an entire unit, or even an entire year, completely planned out and ready to go.  I felt like what I was doing was pretty good, but that I must be a little "scattered," because I still had to go back and change things, or make adjustments in my daily and weekly plans.  Now, I understand that this was one thing I was actually getting right.  I was pretty good at tailoring the instruction to the students in my class, but I wasn't using my time as effectively as I could have been.
The same could be said of my time in the classroom.  Of course, I've always thought of myself as very anti-busy work, but I know now that I never completely eliminated it from my day.  What Routman says about starting the day really hit home with me.  I never really liked assigning morning work, but always felt like it was a necessary evil; there was so much practice we had to "get in," I couldn't see a way to do without it.  But the kids hated it, rarely put their best effort into it, and I absolutely hated grading it at the end of each week.  Yes, I was expecting them to practice and review things that were important for them to know, but it wasn't meaningful to any of us.  I could have given them a more "relaxed start to the day," as Routman suggests, and added back a much more meaningful 30 minutes to each day.
I know a lot of these things are easy for me to say, now that I am out of the regular classroom and no longer dealing with the same daily routines.  But after the changes we've made in instruction this year, I think we can see that our kids are doing better with a little more freedom and fewer worksheets.  They're asking more questions, working more independently, and showing more enthusiasm than they have before.  We're all more excited about what we're doing when we're at school.  As for our time outside of school, it's inevitable that we will put in a little extra when we're changing so much.  But that's part of teaching and growing.  It's also important for us to remember that there's no deadline on improvement, and that even when we think we've "got it," there will always be adjustments to be made.  We don't have to do it all RIGHT NOW.  It's possible to prioritize the changes we want to make and work on it in manageable pieces...while giving ourselves that time outside of school to live interesting and enjoyable lives.  We'll never get it ALL "fixed" or "figured out." If we expect to continue being effective teachers, there will always be something more to work on.