How teachers can move forward when they feel overwhelmed with full plates

Blog takeover by Allison Herrick, Educational Thinking Partner at Read. Write. Think. with Renee

Let’s be honest - the last three school years have been wrought with a-lotness. (Special note: A-lotness is not an official word. I made it up. Feel free to use it as you see fit.)

Since spring 2020, educators have been asked to dodge obstacle after obstacle, change after change. Change isn’t inherently bad; but it is change. And change is always challenging – even if and when you’re excited about it.

Today, almost three years after the outbreak of dramatic (and traumatic) change, educators’ plates are still full. Overwhelmingly, the conversations I have with teachers focus on how much there is to do. It’s all just…a lot.

You feel it, too, right?

The stress of change affects veteran teachers and new teachers alike. How we react to change affects everything. A-lotness doesn’t have to be as overwhelming as it seems on the surface. I believe there are three things we can do to minimize the stress you’re feeling. If you find yourself in a place where you’re struggling to stay above water, know that you’re not alone, and I’m here to help.

Settle in, grab a snack, and let’s talk about how to move forward in the landscape of ‘a lot’.

Focus on the Basics

Let’s start with a nod to athletics. In sports, athletes practice basic skills over and over again until they consistently land their technique. These are the skills that tend to be unaffected by outside forces - because the athlete trains to control the mechanics. In volleyball, it’s your serve; in basketball, it’s the free throw. You master the basics so that when the really complex, unexpected things come you have the mental space to attack those challenges.

Like in sports, there are skills in teaching that have high impact and are controlled by you.

The three big ones are:

Engaging students in a powerful read aloud;
Conferring one on one;
Making responsive differentiated decisions to instruct small groups of students.

These three instructional practices are teaching’s version of a free throw - the basic skills that have a high impact on student achievement. When you hone your skills in these three areas, these skills become automatic; leaving mental space for those other forces that you don’t control.

Three moves to make:

If you’re a new teacher this year, spend time in professional study developing these skills. Learn how to plan and execute a powerful read aloud. Learn about and watch other educators confer with readers and writers (and mathematicians, scientists, and historians–good teaching practices aren’t content-specific).
Spend time this year creating a process for collecting data and practice making decisions for small group instruction based on that information. None of this is easy, but the more you practice these basic skills the more simple it will become to do everyday.
Explore our recommended resources! Please feel free to start here, here and here,

BONUS: Still feeling stuck? Reach out to us; the Read Write Think with Renee team has your back as both thinking partner and action taker!

Plan Intentionally to Make Connections

Whether you plan as a team, follow a curriculum resource, or plan solo, there are ways that you can maximize your planning efforts to make connections. If you have a really great book you want to use for your SEL read aloud because it has great characters that will help to teach empathy, then let’s use that same book to cover the reading standards that address character development, and as a mentor text for narrative writing. Why not find the phonics/word study principles you’re teaching within its pages, too? Can you see how this would simplify your planning? Instruction that would have required a lot - like, four separate tools for instruction - has now been reduced to one.

Planning this way creates cohesion throughout the students’ day. It digs ditches that connect the skills they learned in reading to the skills they are using in writing. Sometimes we overwhelm students with the amount of different things they learn in a day because everything lives in isolation. Imagine learning a brand new skill every hour, every day, for 180 days. That’s a lot.

Two more moves to make:

Are you planning to teach strategies for summarizing a text and determining the main idea? Great! Use that exact same strategy for students to synthesize the texts they are reading in science and social studies rather than trying to think of a completely different way for students to digest the material.
Align the nonfiction writing unit to line up with the nonfiction reading unit and use the same strategy from above to help students plan their writing by thinking of the key details that will contribute to and clarify the main idea of the piece.

Think Big Picture

The daily grind of teaching children is…a lot. So much stress and pressure lives inside our day-to-day life, personally and professionally. The only way to get through the daily a-lotness is to know what the big picture is.

When your classroom full of students packs up their belongings for the last time and gives you one last hug for the school year, what do you want them to walk away from you with? That’s YOUR big picture.

As you continue to shape your school year, ask yourself these questions:

What do you need for them to have learned?
What do you want them to take with them to their subsequent grade level?
What things do they absolutely have to know from your specific area of instruction to succeed as humans?

School leaders, ask yourself these questions:

How do you want the staff and students to feel walking into this building every day?
What does support for teachers and students look like this year?
What is the most important thing that teachers learn and put into practice this year?

Every school year, I’ve asked myself these questions to focus my work. By defining the big picture before any of those complexities - any of the a-lotness - I set my purpose for getting out of the bedroom and into the classroom every day.

ONE move to make:

Feeling overwhelmed by all those questions? Just start with one; set a timer for 20 minutes, and give yourself an undivided 20 minutes to think and answer that ONE question. You’ll be amazed how much progress you’ll make - and how much more confident you’ll feel.

In conclusion: It’s YOUR time to tackle a-lotness

As we all know from news, social media, and sometimes the teacher break room or office, a-lotness can be contagious. One person sharing his or her a-lotness and overwhelm, will begin a chain reaction of MORE a-lotness. It might not have even started with you, yet, it’s 9:08am and you’re already steeped deep in a-lotness.

As we’ve covered, focus on the basics; plan intentionally to make connections; and think big picture.

Remember, A-lotness is YOURS to tackle, emotionally and operationally; you can make one move today to tackle a-lotness, but it needs to be a daily practice psychologically - keep talking to yourself with positive, uplifting, and ‘I can do this’ energy.