On Unplugging Now and Then

I love my digital toys — laptop, desktop, iPad, Kindle, cell phone.  I’m a tech nut, really.  And I love being connected; wifi is my dear friend.  I like to use technology in my teaching, and I enjoy teaching students how to use technology productively, as opposed to just an extension of their social lives. 

However, I’m absolutely compulsive about checking my work email and my course websites.  There is no digital downtime for this teacher and I’ll be honest: It gets to be simply too much.

So this semester I’m planting a flag.  I’m going to choose one day each weekend to not check email or my course websites.

One of the occupational hazards of teaching is that we’re expected to be available 24-7.  Our students start to expect that of us, our colleagues and administrators start to expect that of us, and we start to expect that of ourselves.  Teaching is a lifestyle, or so we’re told, and we buy into it.  I certainly have before, and when the semesters are in full swing, it seems logical to many of us that we check our inboxes each and every day, even on the weekends.  It seems like it’s my duty, my obligation, my occupational cross to bear.  It also seems like an albatross around my neck.

Yet I have other obligations — to my family, to my friends, and to myself.  Those are just as important — indeed sometimes more important — than the ones I have to my students, my colleagues, and my administrators.  I’m guilty of telling my son on a Saturday that I need to check email or discussion posts before I’ll play the Wii with him.  I’m guilty of telling my husband I’ll be ready to go out to lunch once I log in for a few minutes. I’m guilty of telling myself I’ll write for a half-hour once I get some other work done.  A few minutes is never a few minutes; soon a good half-hour has gone by because one student’s question becomes a full-class email I send out clarifying instructions I already went over twice in class because I want to make sure everyone “gets” it.  My son no longer wants to play with me, my husband is beyond irritated that I put digital versions of people ahead of his flesh-and-blood desire to spend time with me, and my writing never happens.

I tell my students I understand they are more than just students; I know they have family, social, sports, and work obligations on top of their classes.  I encourage them to chunk their time so they can focus on each part of themselves in turn.  That includes cordoning off school so it doesn’t bleed over into everything else, and vice-versa.

Yet I’m not a good model of that, myself.  Time to become a good model.  Time to walk my talk.

Starting today.

 

On Not Being Held Hostage

 

During this first week of classes, I shared the picture you see above with all of my students.  I made a big point of explaining to them how I didn’t always “get” this the way I should have when I was younger and their age (although my life experiences when I was growing up taught me that), but this past year is when I really took the saying to heart. 

There are situations we find ourselves in that simply aren’t going to change because the other people involved simply aren’t going to change.  I equated it to letting someone else drive our car while holding us hostage, essentially tied up and gagged, in the trunk.  We are powerless and they are all powerful.  We go where they decide we’re going, and if we’re being held hostage, where they’re going is no place that’s good for us.

Not too many months ago, I was tied up in the trunk.  Everyone in my department was, too.  Heavy-handed administrative decisions that directly impacted a majority of us were made by fiat and completely outside the curriculum process, and we were forced into reaction mode.  Many of us were stunned and outraged, and honestly, when the time came for us to confront the Dean about the situation, we led off with guns blazing, immediately putting the Dean on the defensive.  This particular Dean is new to their position and was quite openly hostile and angry and belittling to us.  Granted, we should have began with our department’s calmer and more rational voices, but the opening salvo clearly set the tone of hostility; no one was really listening to each other.  We were told in so many words what we were doing wasn’t working (even though we hadn’t studied the effectiveness of it yet), was costing the college too much money, and simply padded our workload so we taught fewer classes.  Basically, we were told we were clueless and lazy and greedy.

I knew there was no way I could continue on in that kind of workplace.  That meeting clarified what I had already been feeling for a few years: I needed to leave.  I was held hostage in the trunk and someone else was driving my car.

Add to that I was looking ahead at the next five years of my career there, and all I saw was me in a holding pattern.  I had to wait for retirements to teach the classes I’m really, really good at teaching.  I had to watch other people assume service positions I knew I would be good at but was being passed over for.  I had to see more of the same kind of anti-faculty behavior coming from the college’s administration.

And it was unacceptable to me.

So I did something about it.  I got myself out of that trunk and I found a way to shove those kidnappers ought of my driver’s seat.  I gave up tenure and an Associate Professorship to do it, as well as $30,000 in annual income, to assume a non-tenure-track Lecturer position at a nearby university, but there’s nothing like the feeling of driving my own car again.  I don’t regret it one bit.  I don’t ever glance in the rear-view mirror.

I made the change.  I did it.  And once I did, I became freer, happier, more alive, and more respected.  It wasn’t easy, to be honest, but my gut told me I had to do it, and I’m glad I listened.

That’s the lesson I wanted my students to learn this week.

On Reflective Teaching

On Facebook today, I saw a post from my teacher friends Heather and Amy sharing TeachThought’s piece called “Reflective Teaching: A 30-day Blogging Challenge for Teachers” and I couldn’t resist joining in.  I immediately shared the link and encouraged all of my other teachers friends to rise to the challenge, as well.

While there are prompts for each day of the challenge, I am forging my own path in accepting this blogging challenge.  So much has changed in my professional life this year and I haven’t really sat down to reflect on what it all means.  I have many thoughts about where I’ve been, where I’m at, and where I’m going, and these next 30 days will be the perfect opportunity to begin writing about it.  The given prompts don’t really hit on those things for me, but for others, they’re great diving boards into reflective thought and will definitely help teachers start writing.

I’m a naturally reflective person, and this past year, most of my reflecting has been inside my own head and body, and not nearly enough in writing.  Writing solidifies experience in a concrete way, but I’ve made a conscious choice just to ride the wave of my decisions and experiences on the gut level — the wisest level — because I spent too much time ignoring my gut.  Doing so has freed me in so many ways, and now that I’m free, it’s time to write about what led me to where I am today.  It’s time to start making the abstract more concrete.

If we, as teachers, don’t deliberately reflect on where we’ve been, we truly can’t effectively and honestly figure out where to go next.  We need to understand what we’ve done, what our students have done.  We need to be honest with ourselves — our successes and our failures.  We need to seek to understand the why and the how of what we’ve experienced.

If you’re a teacher of any type, I encourage you to join in, too.