Being Honest About What You Can and Cannot Do

Posted on September 5, 2012

When I left the classroom for a summer, I moved into a idealistic dream space, based upon the current levels of the class that was leaving. When I left for a whole year, this dream space grew into a utopia (an Edutopia, perhaps -- oh, it turns out that's already taken). Add to that the #chitchat on Twitter streams and the talk of "leave kids alone and let them shine" and I started to think I might approach perfection.

Grounded.

Icarus always crashes and this year I have crashed hard. I had flown toward the sun in my trainings, workshops, keynotes and coaching. I had moved closer to the ideal, losing sight on the terrestrial reality of a real classroom with real students and real stories.

So, here I am trying to adjust my own expectations. I'm realizing that often the frantic, busy, mediocre teacher isn't so much bad as distracted. He or she is trying to do too many things to well without realizing limitations.

I'm realizing that success requires me to be honest with myself about my abilities and my limitations. 

It also means I ask for help from others in protecting my weaknesses (in my case, paperwork, compliance and organization) so that I can play to my strengths. It's hard. It's humbling. However, here is an example of my adjusted expectations:

 What I Can't Do: Guarantee every student will meet on every standard by the end of each quarter: What I Can Do: Guarantee that every student who fails to meet the standard shows some type of growth and has a chance to be in a small group for intervention

 What I Can't Do: Meet with each student one-on-one twice a week
What I Can Do: Meet with each student once a week

 What I Can't Do: Assess every assignment every day and leave feedback that will guide them toward mastery
What I Can Do: Allow students to self-assess daily and then assess at least one assignment in each subject each week

 What I Can't Do: Create totally customizable lessons and projects
What I Can Do: Provide multiple options and allow students to modify their work to fit their need (example: find a skill and practice it, choose your own reading, etc.) 

 What I Can't Do: Have some kind of cool hands-on science activity every day
What I Can Do: Let students develop their own experiments and do at least one hands-on assignment per week

 What I Can't Do: Send a positive note home for each student each month
What I Can Do: Send a positive note home for each student each quarter

 What I Can't Do: Leave qualitative feedback and fill out a rubric for all assignments
What I Can Do: Leave qualitative feedback and fill out a rubric on all projects

 What I Can't Do: Avoid the textbook and create my own resources for all assignments
What I Can Do: Use the textbook, find outside resources and create my own resources in a blended approach

 What I Can't Do: Avoid punishments, rewards or raising my voice
What I Can Do: Limit the behaviorism, avoid screaming, pay attention to my emotions and apologize if I embarrass a student

 What I Can't Do: Pull multiple small groups in each subject
What I Can Do: Pull two small groups for reading and two small groups for math

 What I Can't Do: Go to an entirely project-based framework
What I Can Do: Blend projects and assignments into thematic units

 What I Can't Do: Be Superman, no matter how many people are waiting for him
What I Can Do: Be honest, vulnerable and willing to grow

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14 thoughts on “Being Honest About What You Can and Cannot Do”

  1. Yes, that's fantastic advice. Do whatever you can to just barely get by and you wonder why people don't take teachers seriously. Here's another option. Why don't you just work harder and actually do what you wanted to do in the first place?

  2. John, ignore the last anonymous comment. Do you expect a home run hitter to go without striking out? Do you expect an author to never have to revise a draft? Why expect perfection from a teacher? Don't believe the lie. You're a great teacher. You have influenced students more than you know. Keep your head up.

  7. It always amazes me how some people feel the need to make assumptions about things they apparently have no clue about. If you want to be constructive leave your name, don't be ashamed of your views as ridiculous as they may be. Knowing John as an educator the last thing he does is take the easy way out, he pushes himself to improve and part of improving in any field is reflection. Reflecting on what you do, how you do it better and what you can and can not control. This occurs in business like... always!

  8. Mr. Spencer,

    I love your posts. Rarely, do educators write with such humility in their work. I think you have a lot of great ideas and I'm reccomending you on my own blog. Keep it up!

    Sincerely,

    Gary Johnston
    http://teachingaheadofthecurve.blogspot.com/

  9. Dude, that's so not Innovative Educator enough.

    Seriously, as someone who has sworn off #hashtagchat for a couple of weeks so I can clear the noise out of my head and get my bearings (I know, that makes me sound like I should be locked in Arkham, not teaching high school ... then again ...), I have to say that your candidness is refreshing. If we had more honest conversations like this, we might not be struggling as much.

  12. John,

    The brilliance in this post is in your admission that what happens when teachers choose to leave the classroom in search of the holy grail/silver bullet/scapel to perfect education for the multitudes they often (in my mind ALWAYS) end up so far out of touch with the daily realities of the classroom. This is where the push back from a staff comes when we are all herded into another sit and get OR make and take meeting of the next greatest educational solution, which solves nothing, except to cause more work for us and/or students. And often our teaching suffers because of these new directives. Every time I hear a presenter/professional development trainer say "When I was in the classroom..." my mind automatically shifts into thinking 1) how long ago was it, 2) did you EVER try this stuff in your own room, and 3) why do you feel the need to remind us you USED to be an educator. Because, somewhere deep inside, they KNOW the reality of the classroom will not match up to the ideal they are presenting.

    It is admirable you are able to admit, even in only the short time you were out of the classroom, you did end up flying too close to the sun and had nowhere to go but down (I'm using the Icarus story in Mythology next week--very apropos). And, then taking a look at the goals you had set for yourself and coming to terms with reality and not simply scrapping them, but tweaking them in light of reality. This is what effective teachers do. We have to be able to step back from ourselves and admit--ok, this isn't working, what do I do know. Too many give up or push on and fail, and in the end it's the students who lose out in the long run.

    Keep pushing on. Keep trying. Keep doing. That's really the essence of teaching and learning.

    Q

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