Be the Phoenix

The little things that pull us from the ashes

I open the survey results and jump to the open-ended comments.

Classes are about the same as last year and the year before that in terms of rigor, but things feel harder this year because I’m not in the right mindset. The pandemic messed with me mentally and heightened my anxiety quite a bit. I never went back to in-person school last year, so I feel like a lot of people progressed socially without me. It’s just difficult for a lot of reasons.

My gut churns. It’s just difficult for a lot of reasons. The narrative of this year. As a teacher, it certainly has been difficult, so it makes sense to check in with my students, to elicit additional feedback so I can better support them. As I continue scanning the comments, however, I see how much they vary, ranging from “I don’t like school. Never have never will” to “I don’t even realize we have masks on half the time, I just enjoy being back here.”

I’m struggling to find a clear take-away. How can I help my students? Maybe I hadn’t asked the right question. So I turned my attention to the results of a climate survey my school had given the prior week. Again, most results seemed pretty neutral, but two data points captured my attention:

NEVER. It breaks my heart. Although they represent a small percent overall, that’s more than a classroom’s worth of students who feel this way. Odds are that at least a few are in my classes, sprinkled among those who are happy to be back in school, worried about overdue homework, or just plain bored.

Students are all over the map in terms of their coping and comfort levels, and my own humanity requires I be there for each one. But how?

The questions flood around me:

But man, those are BIG questions, and it’s so frustrating when another day passes without answers to them, without feeling like the system is even trying to answer them. A particular line from “What If We…Don’t Return to School As Usual” haunts me daily: “The system is designed to keep us busy perpetuating it so that we don’t have time to redesign it.”

I have struggled with resisting the pull of the negative, of all those shitty things I have no control over. A recent staff meeting began with sharing how we were connecting with students. It quickly devolved into frustrations about how our administration hadn’t listened to systemic changes proposed by staff, things that could have eased student and staff anxieties this year. I get it. I’m mad about that too. And it does get tiring, that feeling nothing will improve unless teachers suck it up and sacrifice yet again. But wallowing in the negativity isn’t productive.

Our students need us.

They need us to be the Phoenixes we are. It sucks at the end of one of those cycles, when our feathers look like Hell, and we’re about to burn out. But damn if we don’t rise from those ashes, wiser, ready to face the next challenge. As Dr, Jill Murray says, “The comeback is always stronger than the setback.”

I know this in my heart. But….

….a “You got this!” or “Be the Phoenix” at the wrong time can demoralize a person. A pep-talk that back-hands you with a side of guilt for not sacrificing another hour of your free time for the good of the children. Those 5% days are brutal. If one-month-ago me would have read the call to action above, I’d have sat catatonic for an hour not knowing if I should cry or just eat an entire carton of ice cream. I was stuck in the ashes, resentful.

Rising from those ashes sounds overly dramatic and exhausting. A total show. But does it need to be? I don’t need to solve all the problems; I just need to be there for my students. But what does that mean?

Like many teachers, I put a lot of pressure on myself to figure out what each student needs (even when they can’t articulate it). To fix things for them. To get it right. And I think students have come to expect that of their teachers. We both jump to the desired outcomes: No stress. A+ work. No missing assignments. Total happiness.

We gotta get on the same page here: All I can do at this moment is try to make it better.

And the next day, try to make it better.

And the next day…

So when I’m burnt out, when I don’t feel up to the super-coordinated spectacular I had envisioned, when I’m so backlogged on reviewing student work, I need something little — something easy — to give me a bit of that Phoenix strength to make things better. To provide the supportive space my students and I need. I can…

After all, those students who feel anxious, who are struggling, who are bored, who are happy, who are gifted beyond measure — they all have one thing in common: No matter how small the gesture, they all benefit when you show you care about them and how you interact with each other in your shared space.

Without students, we are not teachers.

Our focus is forever on these complex, flawed, beautiful humans as we not only teach them the academics, but also draw them into a community, champion who they are, ease their anxieties, help them see their own talents, and address anything else that supports their growth and safety. While so much of this endeavor is joyful and fun and exhilarating, it can also be exhausting and frustrating and hard, for we teachers are complex and flawed, too, but our perpetual commitment is beautiful.

At times, however, we need something little to pull us from the ashes so we can be the Phoenixes our students need us to be.

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