Treading
water come up the other day in a thread about things we can do to make teaching
easier, but it wasn't actually one of the tips.
My
initial reply had been about how making masters of everything I know I'll need
for the year and organizing them in hanging file folders by week with daily
Monday-Friday folders for copies inside each of the hanging folders has really
helped me. Then I talked about how it took 2 weeks of hardcore setup, but after
that it was like a huge weight was lifted and my weekends became a time for me
to work on projects and keep up with my own things.
It
seemed like a helpful piece of advise at the time. It came from my heart, and I
truly thought it would help them since it had helped me so much. Who knows,
maybe it did help some people, but for at least one it was a painful reminder
of what they saw as a shortcoming. We talked back and forth for a little while
talking about where we both were as teachers both with 6 years teaching with
but me having taught in the same grade/same school/same room for 3 years while
they'd been switched all over the place before they finally commented they felt
like they were treading water.
That comment knocked me back on my heels for a second. I was born and raised in Alaska, and every summer for most of my childhood my mom sent me to water safety and swimming classes where we were required to learn how to tread water in case we were ever in a plane or boat accident and needed to stay close to the wreckage. In terms of teaching I’d always viewed treading water as a negative, but looking at it in the context of swimming and water safety, was it really?
Treading water gets a bad wrap. Sometime a situation comes
up where as much as we'd like to forward progress isn't an option. Treading
water lets us bide our time until we're in a better position to start swimming.
We'll get back to that sweet-spot; we just haven’t yet
During that conversation I realized I’d been treading
water too, so I tried to really think about and write down what was causing me
to feel like I wasn't making forward progress. It turned out they were things I
could do something about, and as I’ve worked I started to feel that sense of
treading water drop away as I’ve started moving forward. I’m sure as I move
through this list that more things will come up, but I’ll cross that bridge and
tread that water when it comes up.
In the end I feel like treading water may be more a sign
of growth than anything else. Realizing we’re treading water means that we a
goal, a place we want to get to, and we realize we aren’t progressing towards
that goal.
