Finding Gratitude by Way of an Email from the Past

This morning I checked my gmail, which I do periodically...though not every day. Actually, it had been a few days since I'd last logged in. There was a surprising message waiting for me. The sender? Well, it was me. But I sent it to myself last year at this time.

The subject of the email? "A Letter from May 8, 2020." The sender? "FutureMe."

Now, I've used futureme.org before--it's a pretty nifty tool to send yourself a message in the future. You compose your message, choose a future date, and enter an email address that you'll have access to at the time the message should be delivered. The message stays on futureme.org's servers until then, and they send it out for you.

But this email was truly a surprise. I do not recall sending this email to myself at all--probably the stress of that time of my life? It was a fascinating window into my past reading this one today. Here's what past me (of May 2020) wrote to future me (of May 2021):

Dear Future Dave,

Wow. We are in the thick of COVID-19 social distancing, and it's been about 7 weeks now. You are currently grading exams for EDUC 334 students--they are doing amazing at summing up their learning, even though it has been a crazy second half of the semester being distance learning. You did a fine job of pivoting Science Methods to an online format. Congratulations on putting your knowledge and skills into practice in a way that really benefited your students, by ensuring that the main thing remained the main thing.

You told several people recently that your big regret in all of this was not saying a better "goodbye" to your students before they left for Spring Break, because that was the last time you met up with them. You've been hard on yourself with your typically high expectations for your teaching practice. But you've also been gracious with your students, remembering that they are whole humans. Keep doing that, and keep focusing on *learning* over "grading."

You are a good teacher. You recently completed your 8-year interview process, and passed with flying colors. Your students value the work you are doing, and the way you model teaching for them. Don't be so hard on yourself, yeah?

Remember to be grateful for what you've got. You are healthy, you have meaningful work that seems stable, your kids--even though they drive you crazy sometimes--are pretty amazing, and your wife is incredible. You are blessed!

Don't forget to be awesome,

Past Dave

Is it weird if an email I sent myself--one that I don't even remember sending!--got me a little choked up? Because that happened.

This year...whew, what a year! But past me was right: I do have a lot to be grateful for, even in the midst of a whole lot of awful in the pandemic school year of 2020-2021. 

Image by Mark Rosemaker via Pixabay

Concluding a Course: "Sparkiness" in the Classroom

I'm having a bit of a hard time today as I'm working on my end-of-semester grading. It's not that the students have written poorly, or that they aren't showing evidence of their learning--quite the contrary, actually! But I'm having a hard time because I am wrapping up teaching Elementary Science Methods right now, and it's likely going to be the last time I teach this course, at least for a while.

Why is this so hard for me? Well...because I've taught the course 22 times. I started teaching this course as an adjunct instructor back in 2006, and I've taught it every time it's been offered at our institution since then. My quick math says almost 500 students have taken this course with me in that time, which is pretty ridiculous to imagine, now that I'm thinking about it! While I never feel like I have any course "in my back pocket," this is the one that I know inside-out, because I've taught it so many times. And while the course has obviously evolved over 22 iterations, and while I keep bringing in new ideas, and activities, and things to read and discuss...it's also one that feels very comfortable, because I've lived in it for so long.

At the same time, I recognize it's been more than a decade since I taught middle school science on a daily basis at this point. And I have many other hats I wear in our department, many other courses and projects that I'm part of or in charge of. And so, it's likely time for this one to get handed off to a colleague, and with a new member of our department joining us in the fall, it is time for someone else to take this one.

But there is a sense of grieving for me, recognizing that this is likely my last go at this course for awhile. I think it's because I identify quite strongly with this course in some ways, because it's been part of my life for such a long time. There have been times where this course has felt like work, to be sure. But it has been joyful work for me. I love studying creation, and teaching others about it, and teaching teachers how to foster a love of creation in their own students. 

And so, I'm struggling a bit as I grade these final summative projects from the semester, but realizing that this is more about how I feel than about my students' learning. Because you know what? They are taking away some really fantastic things! So many of them are sharing specific things that made a difference for them in the way they think about science as a subject, or about themselves as teachers, or their future teaching practices. Many of them are naming specific ideas or activities from class that they want to use with their own students. I love this! It's humbling to think about the 500-ish students I've had the pleasure of teaching over the years all taking things they learned from my class and using them with their own students. (Ooof. Gives a real sense of the responsibility we have as teacher educators!)

One student wrapped up her final paper with a personal note that just made me grin:

To finish off, the last thing I learned in this course that I want to take with me would be to get my students excited. Your attitude that you brought everyday got us excited. The questions that you would ask and the activities you would follow up with would make us excited. You always brought your all and that was evident when we were learning from you. Even maybe if you were not excited about the content, you “faked” it and you made us excited in return. Or maybe I was tired a day and the energy you brought defiantly helped keep my attention. I think that students need to have that sense of fun in their day and to not always be so serious. Your constant level of "sparkiness" and fun attitude is something that I want to carry with me. 

You know, I'll take that! If nothing else, I hope and trust that my own enthusiasm for teaching, and the way I model this craft for them rubs off on them a little bit. 

And I think I'll be okay not teaching this course anymore. I'll still be bringing my "sparkiness" to all of the classrooms where I have the opportunity to teach!

Image via pixabay.

On Being Seriously Silly

 I saw this one on Twitter today from the eminent Sir John Cleese:

Always be the silliest in any group. 😃 #tbt pic.twitter.com/oMJu876Wsz

— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) April 22, 2021

(Just in case you aren't familiar...John Cleese is one of the members of the ground-breaking British comedy troupe, Monty Python. This photo is of the group as they looked in the early days--maybe late 1960s or early 70s?--and Cleese is the one grinning like a fool. They may have had their heyday in the 70s and 80s, but this group has had a huge impact on media and culture far beyond the British Isles.)

I love it! I think this is a rule that I live by, and I didn't even realize it until I saw it written this way.

I revel in silliness. 

I play the ukulele.

I yo-yo as I walk across campus.

I get my Intro to Ed students to try juggling in class.

I exhibit a manic energy in teaching my Elementary Science Methods course.

At one of the summer camps I serve (shout-out to Royal Family Kids!) I dress up in a banana costume and sing ridiculous songs...and somehow get the whole group of campers and staff to play along and sing and dance with me.

Not atypical for me to look like this (at camp, at least...)

Something I've tried to embody--and to pass along to my students, future teachers that they are--is that I should take my WORK very seriously...but I try to not take MYSELF too seriously. 

Not that I want to be the butt of every joke, or anything like that. And I'm not just trying to be self-deprecating all the time. After all, I do want my students to have confidence in me as their teacher, and I want my colleagues to have confidence in me as someone who is reliable, and trustworthy, and an active contributor to important work.

But...I also want to be able to bring levity, positivity, and joy to my work! And I think I (generally) embody this quite well.

My big wondering right now: do people take me seriously even when I am silly?

I guess I'm thinking about this from a John Cleese sort of frame. He is one of the best in the world at what he does--he takes his comedy seriously, and has honed his craft over decades of work. Maybe my teaching practice isn't all that different?

Can I be seriously silly?

Exhaustion and Emotional Labor

What a year it's been! (Understatement much, Dave??) 

Seriously, this has been a demanding year for me as a teacher. I am not complaining. I'm so grateful that I've been able to be regularly meeting up with my students in person. I'm equally grateful for the technological support to make online and hybrid teaching realistic, if not easy. Several months ago I wrote a baleful post entitled "Teaching is Not for the Faint of Heart...and HyFlex Teaching in Particular." Looking back at this post...I don't disagree with anything I wrote then. But I'm grateful that I didn't have as many students shunted into quarantine during this spring semester (questions remain about why this is...) which has made managing the times I need to try and teach in multiple modalities simultaneously much more reasonable, at an emotional level at least.

That comment, "at an emotional level," is something I've been thinking a lot about lately. I am feeling exhausted as we reach the end of this year. I always feel a little tired at the close of an academic year. But this year it's more than "a little tired." I described it to a colleague today as "exhaustion." And I don't want to sound hyperbolic here; I think this is accurate. Teaching is demanding work under the best of circumstances. Teaching during COVID has not been the best of circumstances. And, self-indulgent as it sounds, not having a spring break this year has taken a real toll on me. I understand why we did it this way--and I DO think it was the right call--but I also think that this disruption to our normal rhythm of the semester has had a real impact. My students are tired, but hanging in there. My colleagues are tired, but hanging in there. I'm tired too...and hanging in there, I think.

But this comes back to the idea of "emotional labor" that I've been thinking about a fair amount over this year. Back in October I wrote an article entitled "How Can We Support Teachers?" that draws on this concept quite lot. On our podcast, my buddy Matt and I spent a whole episode thinking through Emotional Labor for teachers, and how demanding this is for educators. The main idea of emotional labor: some work is physical, some is mental, and some is emotional. Emotional labor means managing your own emotional state to elicit a particular emotional state in others--and teachers do this all the time. We aren't the only ones, of course; nurses, police officers, social workers, flight attendants, and so many "serving" professions demand a level of emotional labor. But I think this is ever more acute for teachers working in the age of COVID. We often check our own emotions as a normal part of the work, to ensure students will learn.

Physical labor can be (obviously) exhausting. Mental labor can be exhausting. And...emotional labor can be exhausting. 

This year, the emotional labor of teaching is putting more pressure than ever on teachers, I think. And while I'm pretty resilient, and I LOVE my work, I'm also finding myself looking forward to the weekends more than I think I ever have since I've been a professional educator.

Check in on the educators you know, friends. I suspect I'm not alone in this exhaustion about the emotional labor of teaching. 

And, how to manage this exhaustion? Well...what makes sense? 

When we are exhausted...we need to rest. 

And so, I'm working on resting more this year than I ever have before. This semester I've been trying to not work in the evenings more than two nights a week. (I'm certainly not always successful at this.) I'm trying to not check my email over the weekends. I'm trying to get to bed at a regular time and get up at a regular time. I'm trying to get at least some physical exercise every week. Isn't that crazy to say "I'm working on resting"--working on resting??? But it's true; this is where I'm at, emotionally.

I'm still feeling exhausted...but I'm (perhaps surprisingly?) still feeling deep joy in my work. But it ain't easy, folks.

Image via Pixabay

A Pandemic Year, and Counting Blessings

I am feeling reflective as I write this. I was grateful to have been able to get my first shot for the COVID vaccine this past Thursday, one year to the day after the WHO declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. 

I posted this on Instagram afterward getting the vaccine, feeling grateful:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Dave Mulder (@d_mulder)

What a year it has been! And yet, God is faithful. Despite all of the hardships, frustration, angst, anxiety, and depression of this past year--for me personally, and perhaps for you as well--I have learned to more faithfully rely on God as my refuge and strength (in a Psalm 46 kind of way) on a day-to-day basis than ever before. When I hear people talk about "going back" to the way things were before the pandemic, I long for some parts of that too. But I also realize how this past year has changed me, in both unhealthy ways (like stress eating as a coping strategy, and a lot more time scrolling on social media) and healthy ways (like more intentionally creating quiet times with God, and growing in being okay with being "just okay.") While I certainly hope to reset some of the unhealthy ones...but I don't want to too quickly "go back" to the way things were before, if it means I might forget and lose hold of some of the good things that have been happening in my life too.

All of this has me thinking about this lovely song, from one of my favorite bands, Rend Collective. The song is "Counting Every Blessing," and it was released some time before the pandemic year (in 2018, I think?) I invite you to listen, and I hope it gives you a lift in the way it buoys my spirits every time I listen to it. It's not a panacea song of, "See, everything is great!" but more of a, "Even when things are hard, or unclear, I can still see that God is in control of all things. 

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.

Learning Targets

 I've been thinking a lot about learning targets lately. In the two methods courses I'm teaching right now (Science Methods for Elementary and Middle School, and Methods of Teaching STEM K-12) we are getting started with developing unit plans, and we're thinking about goals and objectives. And a recent episode of the podcast my buddy Matt and I started was all about learning targets too. (You can listen to the episode here, if you're interested: Hallway Conversations with Matt and Dave: Goals)

The main idea I'm hoping to convey to my students about learning targets is just how valuable they are for keeping both the teacher and the students on track for what we're working towards. Imagine yourself as an archer--having a clear target makes taking aim so much more obvious. A clear target helps you measure (assess) learning: did students hit the bullseye? And, I would suggest, a clear target even helps you focus your teaching on ensuring students will be able to hit that target.

Image by mickrh via Pixabay

Is it possible to over-emphasize learning targets? Probably...like almost anything else in the world of Education today. But I have found targets so helpful in my own teaching practice, perhaps because I'm likely to go off the rails and get distracted pretty easily.

So what is a learning target? Here's my current thinking...

Learning targets are often framed as "I can..." statements, but the old school format for writing objectives that I learned in my own undergraduate teacher preparation works just as well: "Students will be able to..." Thinking this through, I think that "Students will be able to..." (SWBAT) is more framed for the teacher, while "I can..." is more framed for the student. 

And then, the key is following up this introduction with a solid action-oriented verb: what will students be able to do? Describe? Analyze? Illustrate? Explain? List? Develop? Construct? Argue? Contrast? Hypothesize? Write? Model? Debate? There are so many possibilities, but I like the idea of connecting them to different levels of thinking, such as what is described in Bloom's Taxonomy. Aiming for at least some learning targets that get at higher-order thinking skills seems like a really wise strategy to me. (If all we're asking students to do is remember and regurgitate information...that feels like a "thin" education to me!)

When I was talking this through with my students in STEM methods this week, we were debating the pros and cons of writing learning targets for students vs. framing them for teachers. One of my students expressed some concern about "I can..." statements, even as a university student: it puts a lot of pressure on the students to really be able to do these things! Another student responded with a wondering: why not use both SWBAT and I can? Here was his reasoning: even if you are sharing learning targets with students at the beginning of a unit or lesson, using "students will be able to..." as the frame puts this in a future-tense: "Maybe you can't do this now...but you will be able to do this later on." And then, using "I can" as a frame at the end of the unit or lesson gives students an opportunity to self-assess: "Can I now do this, after I've had the opportunity to learn it? Or do I need more practice?"

I LOVE this approach, honestly. And this makes me feel grateful for the opportunity to keep learning, right along with my students.

Are you using learning targets? How do you feel about them? Do you find them valuable for guiding your students learning, or for your own teaching?