Good teachers are the ones that ...

Last week something happened in school that got me thinking quite a lot about how we see failure. What is failure to us and why are we so scared of it? Yes, we are teachers and yes, we have a high responsibility, especially when teaching children, but we are also only human and all we can do is to do our best and learn from our mistakes to do it better next time.

I was working in the teachers’ lounge when one of the teachers I coach” came in and started crying.

I knew what happened, because half an hour earlier, there was this little 3 year old guy who came to us crying because he fell off a chair (by the way, he is doing great, it was just the first shock).

As a side note: when little children cry, the best method to calm them down is to acknowledge their pein, but not for a long time. The best way is to completely change the topic to something unexpected, for example "what did you do yesterday or what did you eat today". And then have a conversation about it. Often they don't cry because they are hurt but because of the first shock.

This incident obviously shocked this teacher (1^st  year  teacher) so much that she said right away that she will never ever teach this age group again. And she was serious about that. It didn’t help that all the other 8 experienced preschool teachers told her that accidents can happen, she shouldn’t take it this bad, trying to calm her down.

Of course, such an accident should not happen, we always have to have an eye on every child, but it is also not a reason to quit the job right away, because you think you are not efficient. 

So I watched all of those teachers trying to calm her down and nothing helped for about 15 minutes. She was in her own little world of 'I'm a failure, I'm not a good teacher, I shouldn't teach children, I should actually not teach at all, ..."
I told her to come with me to a quiet room where we could chat. She sat in front of me sobbing even more. I didn' t know somebody had so many tears.

I simply asked her “What’s really going on?”. She retold me the story about the child, but I cut her words and said that this is not the reason she is crying. “The child is fine and you heard accidents can happen, so what’s really going on?”

After some back and forth we found out together that she actually has a very low self esteem, even though to the outside she shows an extremely high self esteem and is very sure about herself being a perfect teacher.  And that was the point. Basically she defined herself as a person through being a perfect teacher. Did I mention that it was her first year, so she has been teaching a whole 3 months now!!! It went well until now, because she really has talent to teach children, but when this accident happened, she saw that she is not infallible. She saw herself as being this great teacher and this accident just didn’t match the image of herself and her whole world crumbled.
. 

I told her that nobody can be a perfect teacher – ever! There will always be somebody better. And especially if you just start teaching, there is no way you can be a perfect teacher. We all want to be, that’s for sure, but it’s not realistic. We might be good teachers, or even brilliant teachers, but never perfect.

And now comes the important part: I have seen so many teachers leaving classes, because they felt like they were not effective and not able to cope with a certain class:
I told her that giving up means that you are not even close to being a good teacher. And with such an attitude you will never become one. You are simply running away and basically "teaching" the kids that it's ok to just give up without trying their best.
Everybody on the street can teach classes where every kid is superintelligent, understands everything right away, is sitting nicely on his chair, being a little angel and doing everything you say.
Good teachers are the ones that when they are challenged, they go and try to find solutions.
Good teachers are the ones that show the children that giving up in life is not an option, because that is what they will learn from you when you give up and leave.
Being a teacher is not just standing in front of a class and talking, there is so much more to it.

I can’t count the times where I was at the point and wondering if I should even be a teacher and I have always been honest about my challenges, especially with my boss and coworkers. We are often scared to talk with the ones that are closest and could probably give us the best advice, because they know the kids as well as you. We are scared that our boss might think we are not efficient and fire us or the other teachers will think that I don't deserve to teach here or whatever else crosses our minds.

But you know what this is all in our own heads. I still have to come across a principals who doesn't appreciate somebody who has a challenge but is looking for help a million times more than somebody who pretends to have everything under control, but doesn't.

And I have no idea how often I talked to other, more experienced teachers about my thoughts, when I was younger and even today. 

And I always got the same answer: Just the fact that you are asking questions and are trying to find solutions shows that you are a great teacher. And this is something I keep in my heart all the time.
And you should, too.

Failure does not exist - as long as you use it wisely. It should not be something that makes you questioning if you are a good teacher. Of course it is always good to have a close look at yourself and to try to be better, but “failure” will always be part of life, even if you have been teaching for 2O or more years. There will always be that one child that might be hard to handle or this one class that just doesn’t care about all the 500 discipline strategies you know. You always have to constantly deal with new situations, the question is only how you face it. Do you quit or do you learn from it and find a solution?

There is an easy way to answer yourself if you feel like you failed as a teacher completely or not.  Something I tell “my teachers” all the time when they are down after a lesson is that it is good to see what went wrong in the class in order to find ways that this won’t happen again.
The problem is only that sometimes we focus too much on what goes wrong and then our self esteem as a teacher goes down and we might question if we are actually made for this job or this age group. But it is just as important to see what went well! In order to redo it. No matter how bad a class went, there will always be something positive. Even if it was "this one second" that you managed to get their attention, even if you lost it again shortly after. It is positive that you got it in the first place, now we have to focus on how to keep it and that's a whole different story than saying "the kids never listen to me, I'm such a bad teacher".

So never stay stuck on a “failure”, because this doesn’t really exist.
They are only “opportunities to learn something new”.
And we are teachers because we love learning ;)