Ignite Literacy Services

Last night, as I was trying to massage the dirt flavor out of kale, I had an epiphany: we need to make schools easier and more fun.

Now before you blow a gasket, I mean easier and more fun for teachers. The fact that your first inclination was to yell, “What about RIGOR??” when you saw this headline is a sign that you need to keep reading.

It’s not our circumstances that are the problem, its our beliefs about our circumstances.

Let’s use my new skills I learned from my amazing life coaching friend, Jenn Fearnley to look at a belief we have about school:

The end of the year assessment is high stakes.

I don’t mind a test. It makes sense to have something to measure whether or not our curricula and practices are serving students. All assessment is feedback for us to see if what we are doing in our classrooms is helping students learn. That’s a good thing.

What’s not good is that we have a lot of icky, kale-flavored beliefs entangled in the concept of high stakes testing that are not serving us or our students.

Believing that this end of the year assessment is the point of everything we do has led schools to believe that they have to spend the year in test-prep mode. This actually goes against research, best practice, and common sense. In fact, test-prep curricula lead to poorer test results than rigorous, engaging, complex, art-enriched, recess-promoting schools. Interesting.

Also, it’s not really high stakes for teachers. I don’t know a single teacher that was wonderful in every way and then had poor test results and got fired. Do you?

Come closer and let me whisper something in your ear. *There’s no one to replace you. No one wants your job. You aren’t going to lose it over a test.*

Administrators, on the other hand, they might.

The real thing at stake is the students, and their futures. We should be doing everything we can to ensure that we give them our best. But that doesn’t look like test prep.

What if we chose to believe something else?

What would it look like if we chose to let go of some of the beliefs that are stressing us out the most?

Teachers want to do a good job, and do what’s best for kids. What if we held on to these values and also asked ourselves, “How can I make my job easier and more fun?”

How would that lead us to use our expertise, creativity, and innovation to continue to learn, grow, and try things out for our students?

How would that paradigm shift translate into our classroom environment?

Don’t get me wrong: it would not actually be easier or more fun to go wild on TeachersPayTeachers and print out 100 coloring worksheets on the topics you’re supposed to cover.

Learning more about what research shows will allow you to more easily determine which resources will be beneficial for specific students.

Letting go of practices that aren’t serving you or them can make things easier.

Seeing students persevere and conquer complex tasks is fun and fulfilling.

I’m not advocating for a lowering of expectations, standards, or rigor. Just an examination of beliefs and a conscious choice to let go of the ones that aren’t serving us while finding our own ways to improve the quality of our lives and professions.

Because no one is coming to save us.

And this job is too important to do it while constantly stressed and overwhelmed.

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Note: I first heard the concept of “easier and more fun” while listening to Jody Moore’s podcast, Better than Happy. She’s amazing, you should listen. She’s a life coach for busy moms, and while she doesn’t speak about education, her principles are applicable to lots of aspects of your life. I’ve been applying the “easier and more fun” principle to as many things as possible. How could cleaning the house become easier and more fun? Let’s jam to Taylor Swift while we do it. How can eating healthier be easier and more fun? Let’s try a meal kit. Hence the kale-massage. You get the point.

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