Early in my career, a colleague told me that if I couldn't get my job done during the school day, I was doing something wrong. I remember being completely tongue-tied. A veteran employee of the school district, and a building union rep, was telling me that I—who thought I'd been doing so well—was in some way a failure.
The conversation ended without any response on my part. I wrestled with that comment for years.
In my first year of teaching, my principal gave me four standard English classes and the white elephant gift of all high school schedules: yearbook class. What I knew about putting a yearbook together wouldn't have filled a thimble, but there I was, responsible for a historic document that would live on in school history—no small thing in my little community.
That year, 12-hour workdays were the norm. By March, my hair was starting to fall out. It wasn't just because of yearbook. I gave handwritten feedback on every assignment, read and re-read supplemental texts, and searched for videos that connected to each unit. I tend to think I'm lucky that much of the year is a blank. If the stress was affecting my physical health, my mental health couldn't have been much better.
After the lunchroom remark about my teaching, I did some reflection and reevaluation. The next year, I tried being one of those scheduled workday-only teachers. I arrived at 7:15 a.m. on the nose and walked out the front door at 2:45 p.m. I managed to keep it up for a school year.
What makes that year similar to the first one: I don't remember much about it. I was neither a good teacher nor a bad teacher. Students got graded work back a little later than they had in the past, and I often recycled lesson plans from the previous year without any meaningful attempt to update, but I made it through. I was a perfectly adequate teacher.
But being a teacher who was just satisfactory wasn't and isn't my style. Sure, I could do the job within my 7.5 hours, but it wasn't a job I was particularly proud of.
Instead of being shamed into working a regular day, this is the advice I wish I had gotten in those early years: Decide what you care about and work hard to make those things work well. Do your best not to care about anything else. Choose your battles.
After more than a decade of experience, this is what I know: I care most about my students and their experience in my room. Sometimes I put in a longer workday than I'm paid for. For me, it's worth it. That extra time turns into better material for my students. I teach from bell to bell and finish more class periods midsentence than with time left on the clock. My job is to balance being engaging and dynamic with teaching good material. I love cracking jokes and laughing, but I don't let silliness derail my lesson plans. I am structured, but I also know how to pivot when my plan isn't working with what my students bring to my room on any given day. Those extra minutes at work make all of this possible.
If you're a funny person, be a funny teacher. If you're warm and nurturing, be warm and nurturing. If you're neither funny nor particularly nurturing, but you enjoy teaching and learning, be the teacher who shows how much you care about education.
I maximize the value of those extra minutes by also choosing to care about the two things that waste the most time in my classroom: missing pencils and bathroom trips for nose-blowing. In my room, I always have a cup with free pens and pencils because the time it takes a student to run back to their locker or the front office in search of a writing utensil could be spent learning.
I also stock Costco-brand tissues and hand sanitizer and tell students to just step into the hall if they're going to be noisy about it. Some of my coworkers think it's a waste to spend money on pencils and tissues or that students should learn to be responsible. Others don't mind the time it takes a student to run a quick errand. But I've decided that in my room, lessons in English matter more than lessons in pencil ownership. Plus, it's not like you can predict sneezing.
Occasionally, I'm asked what I think about x, y, or z. I'm careful about the topics on which I voice my opinion. I do care how students who are suspended get makeup work. I don't care at what point in the day we hold a school assembly. I choose my battles carefully.
Teaching is a profession filled with people who care. But if we try to care about all things, our energy gets spread too thin. And the things we're passionate about suffer from our lack of attention.
So, take care of you. Care about the things that truly matter most, and don't worry about the rest. You're a member of a great big team, and among all of us, we'll get it covered.