A Case of the Blahs (And Teaching Anyway)

By nature, I'm a pretty upbeat person. I can usually look on the bright-side, find something lovely to celebrate, and bring some joy to pretty much any situation. Positivity is one of my superpowers!

But today, I have a case of the blahs. Nothing is terrible, but I'm just feeling that sense of tired irritability where small things bug me, and nip at me, and consume more of my cognitive space than I might like to admit.

Image by Krithika Parthasarathay via Pixabay

I headed into class at noon today, and in those last couple of minutes just before we began, I decided to change up my lesson plan for today. The future teachers I serve are amazing people, and I'm so grateful for the opportunities I have on a daily basis to help them see the varied aspects of the work we do as educators. And today? Today that meant a little meta-lesson about the emotional labor that is assumed for teachers.

I started by just naming it: "I'm feeling uncharacteristically blah today, folks." A few seemed surprised, but most kind of nodded--I mean, I am a pretty bouncy presence most of the time, and I just wasn't at the beginning of class today. And I explained how this is part of the work we do as teachers: we often have to check our own feelings, suck it up, and just teach anyway. This probably wasn't earth-shattering news to anyone in the room, but I thought it could be illuminating for them to notice this, and see if they could tell a difference in the way class unfolded. In another course, I have a lesson I teach about the difference between "acting like a teacher" and "being a teacher." Today's class meeting was an example in practice of "acting like a teacher."

So, after this odd preamble, I headed into the lesson as planed. We spent some time in discussion about a chapter I asked them to read in preparation, and they had lots of thoughtful reflections and deliberate questions, as they normally do. Then a very brief lecture from me, followed by a series of activities and demonstrations. They participated well, interacted well, shared their thinking well.

And you know what? By the end of class, I realized I wasn't "acting like a teacher" anymore. Somehow, starting off with that "acting" morphed back into my more normal embodiment of my own teaching practice. And honestly, the playfulness of the activities I had planned to do with the students--and seeing their joy in discovery--has buoyed my spirits in a way I wasn't expecting.

Somewhere in one of his writings, master educator Parker J. Palmer says something along the lines of, "Technique is what you use until the teacher shows up." Maybe this is the lesson for me that I needed to be reminded of and practice today. And my hope is that, for the future teachers I serve, I got to model some sense of this today.