5 Things We Should Stop Pretending

My good friend Aaron Hogan challenged me to come up with five things we should stop pretending as educators. Here are his five things (which you should totally check out). It took me about a week, but I’m always up for a challenge.

So here goes. Five things we should stop pretending:

1)      In order to be good at our jobs we have to check emails every five minutes, even on nights and weekends.

Hello, my name is Stormy, and I’m addicted to my phone.  I often won’t walk from one side of my house to the other without it. The little number at the bottom of the screen representing unread email messages taunts me. It says, “Someone needs you right now!” It says, “There’s something important you forgot to do!” And so I check it over and over again. I delete junk mail, answer easy questions, file messages, flag items to handle later. I’m managing my work time when I should be enjoying my home time.

This semester I’ve made a real effort not to check my work email obsessively. Over Spring Break I even committed out loud that I would not check my work email for three straight days. It was tough! When I needed information about a church function that I was sure was waiting for me in my inbox, I made my husband check my email just to give me the info I needed and nothing else. I turned off, disconnected, replied to no one for three whole days. You know what? They sky didn’t fall. No one thought I was a slacker for not responding within 3.5 minutes during Spring Break.  Email can wait.

Anyway, if someone really needed me they would text me. Because that’s better, right?

2)      We don’t care what other people think.

The truth is that we absolutely care what other people think. It’s because we’re connected to others that we invest in them and they in us. People who don’t care what other people think are either lying to themselves or incredibly disconnected. I don’t want to be either, so I’ve decided it’s okay that I care.

I didn’t make this up. In Brene Brown’s book Daring Greatly, she calls readers out on this. The idea that it’s somehow strong or self-assured to not care about others’ opinions of you is false. However, she asserts that the way others see us shouldn’t drive our decision making or define who we are. I love this from her book (replace Lawrence Welk with Willie Nelson, and this is so me):

I carry a small sheet of paper in my wallet that has written on it the names of people whose opinions of me matter. To be on that list, you have to love me for my strengths and struggles. You have to know that I’m trying to be Wholehearted, but I still cuss too much, flip people off under the steering wheel, and have both Lawrence Welk and Metallica on my iPod (Brown 171).

I find myself sometimes getting caught up in worrying about what others think. Will they like my decisions? Will they think I did the right thing? Do they think I’m doing a good job? Then I remember the names on my piece of paper and that I’m doing my best, and I take a deep breath.  I care about what lots of other people think, but as long as my heart is in the right place and I’m taking care of those who matter most, I’m not going to beat myself up about other people’s opinions.

3)      “Venting” means it’s okay to say whatever we want about others.

One of the pledges I’m asking staff at my school to make is to always see the best in others. I’ve said to every single teacher  I interviewed that I believe what we say behind closed doors impacts the way that we treat people out in the world. I simply don’t believe that we can close the door, trash someone personally, professionally, or otherwise, and then return to life as normal treating that person with kindness and respect.

I’ve vented, I’ve listened to people vent, and I’m quite sure I’ve been the subject of someone else’s venting session. I’ve pretended that this behavior is healthy and makes me feel better. But the truth is that words have power (even behind closed doors), and if I’m willing to say something awful about a person behind their back but not talk about it with them face to face, then that feels bad. Really bad. It feels shameful.

I’m planning to use this clip from Jimmy Fallon with our staff to start a conversation about choosing words carefully and not saying anything about a person when they’re not there that you wouldn’t say in front of them.

4)      Schools can solve all of the world’s problems.

I’m currently reading The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace. This is the true story of a brilliant young man from poverty whose mother struggled to give him opportunity after opportunity, sacrificing her own health and comfort in the process. His father loved him and had a bright personality and mind, but ultimately made his money as a drug dealer and hustler and ended up in prison. Rob is faced with several paths, and in his environment they each seem to have equal merit.

The schools Rob attended were full of caring, smart, I’ll-do-anything-to-help-you-help-yourself educators, yet Rob’s life was still “short and tragic.” The bottom line is that it takes all of us to help kids become positive, contributing members of society. It takes dedicated teachers, parents, and communities working together with a common goal. It takes kindness and understanding and connection, not just to the school but to the world.

I’m an educator. I believe with all my heart that schools are magical places and education has infinite power. But we can’t neglect the fact that it truly takes all of us to educate our children. We need to actively seek partnerships with those educators who aren’t inside our buildings – the moms and dads and grandmothers and pastors and random folks on the street who create the communities where our kids live. It really does take the whole village, and the school needs to be in charge of coordinating that effort.

5)      Going to the dentist isn’t that bad.   

I couldn’t think of a 5^th thing, but I did go to the dentist yesterday. I hate the dentist. Stop telling me that going to the dentist isn’t that bad, because it is.