Treading Water, not Just a Pool Safety Technique

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.

My Big Adventure

We're about to start our 7th week of school, and I feel like I'm just now getting my first day off. I have all of my handouts printed out for our big Language Arts unit assessment printed off and all of my math, social studies, and science lessons organized and ready for the week. It's even a short week, which I don't think actually impacts anyone's workload, but who knows, maybe that's why I'm finally getting a day off. I'm horrible at taking days off or even time to myself in any manifestation, which is probably one reason I do well teaching in bush Alaska, not getting out to see my family and friends or have a basket of onion rings for sometimes nine months at a time. Another reason is that I was raised in an Alaskan village a lot like the one I teach in now, in fact even smaller, so it's not really all that different for me.

Underscoring my problems with taking time for what's mine, I actually started this blog last year, and this is actually my 8th post, I just never finished any of the other posts. Even though it was my 4th year teaching in King Cove, I had just switched grades and was experiencing my first year teaching 6th grade. I was also working to establish myself as a Teachers Pay Teachers seller, and taken all together it was just too much for me to do all at once. Who knows, maybe it still is, but I'd like to think that the mere fact that, even seven weeks in, I'm finally taking a day off, admittedly badly, and making my first post means that maybe in my 5th year of teaching my dream of being an organized teacher with a classroom that's all together, a TpT store, a few hobbies, and a little time to myself may be within reach, even if one of my hobbies is my own classroom. It still counts!

I'm not entirely sure why I decided to start this blog last year; I think it just felt like a good idea, but it took me a year to realize why it felt like such a good idea. I knew that unlike a lot of teacher blogs coming out of Alaska I didn't want it to be about the adventure of teaching in Alaska, because Alaska is home so I don't think it'll ever be the adventure to me it is to everyone else, which is kind of sad in someways that I can never see my home with the same excitement as everyone else. I'm sure my life in Alaska will come up as time goes on since life in Alaska goes hand in hand with teaching in Alaska, but for me writing a blog about my teaching adventures would involve moving somewhere exotic like South Dakota or Texas.

However, over the past year as I've gotten to know a few other teachers on TpT through product requests I've discovered that as much as I love my job teaching 6th grade sometimes being one of only two 6th grade teachers in an entire district can get a little... dry. Sure I talk shop with my twelve K-12 co-workers, and everyone is really understanding that I've very work minded and most conversations with me will be able my classroom. But since we all teach something different and are around each other for months at a time a lot of times it feels like there's no one for me to discuss my teaching ideas with or hear about new ideas from without sounding like a broken record. Through TpT I discovered that what's always seemed so normal to me, teaching in Alaska, actually sets me apart, but more importantly that I can be part of a wider teaching community, even if it's not in the face to face way I always imagined it would be.

Who knows, maybe this will be a blog about my great Alaskan adventure, my adventure just may not look the same as everyone elses.