Why I'm Going to Spend More Time at my Desk

   

Hello! This is a long blog post, but it's also my first one, so I'd like to take a brief minute to say welcome, and thank you for reading!

    Back in September, a colleague of mine paid a visit to my classroom and left a sticky note on my desk when she left. It said, "Great job! I don't think you sat down once!" It made my day! As a teacher of ninety minute blocks, that tendency is a huge point of pride for me. All of my teacher preparation classes emphasized the importance of the "two eyes, two feet" system of classroom management. Be up. Be aware. Be present. Invest in comfortable shoes. And never, under any circumstances, be caught sitting.
     Don't get me wrong. I still think it's important to be mentally and physically present in the classroom. After all, it's our job to interact with students. However, for the past couple of weeks, I've had a nagging pain in my back. Most of the time, I don't notice it at all, but it hurts the most when I stand up, especially if I have to twist to do it. When I agreed to a two-week Fitbit challenge with my fabulous coworkers, I had no idea one of them was made of steel, and she had no idea that I am an incredibly poor loser, so naturally, we tried to step each other to death. (I lost.) As I am just shy of twenty-six years old, back pain is a new phenomenon for me, but it is just the latest of many signals I've been receiving lately that are all screaming the same thing: sit your butt down.
     All physical symptoms aside (Don't worry, Mom; I put Bengay on it), the message of taking a load off is beginning to haunt me. This week, I read Kristin Souers' incredible book, Fostering Resilient Learners: Strategies for Creating a Trauma-Sensitive Classroom. While it was just as practical and informative as I had dreamed, it took me by surprise. I bought the book expecting it to tell me all about students, what they need, and what to do and say to them to help them. It did a lot of that, but Souers also said this:

Educators are notorious for giving selflessly, for tending to their students and ignoring their own needs, for buying classroom materials with their own money, and for focusing most of their energy, time, thoughts, and emotions on their students. It is no small feat to get some teachers to even talk about their own needs, let alone address them with action– yet it is a foundational step in the process of becoming a trauma-sensitive practitioner. If we aren't physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually healthy, we cannot reasonably expect to be able to help our students become healthier and more successful in school. (41)

     It's not revolutionary to say that teachers are magical, self-deprecating, martyrous unicorns who need to take better care of themselves, but what struck me about Fostering Resilient Learners was that this idea wasn't just relegated to a paragraph here or there; it was the primary focus of the book! Souers is helping teachers create trauma-sensitive classrooms not by helping us "fix" students who have experienced trauma, but by helping teachers fix the way we understand and react to our students. By my completely subjective, unscientific estimates, at least half of the book is about teacher reflection and self-care and how it directly impacts our practice. In other words, sit down and take care of yourself, and you will be better emotionally equipped to take care of your kids.
     No sooner had I finished this book than I learned the same lesson yet again, this time from my students. After nearly a week of inclement weather days, compounded by our winter NWEA testing, I wanted to give my students something really authentic and engaging to sink their teeth into, to remind them that school is more than worksheets and tests. So I pulled out a lesson my mentor teacher, Erin Franklin, taught me, and I challenged my students to design their dream school. Using the jigsaw method, we read six articles about different styles and philosophies of education, and in every teacher's favorite game of chicken, I let my students choose their groups. Each group had one simple mission: design a school that will prepare students to become functional citizens of a stable society.
     As always happens when we let students choose their groups, pods of friends congealed in every corner of the room. I found myself pacing nervously. Would Sammie's group be too loud? Would Eric's group just goof around? Would Taylor derail her group entirely with something fabulously creative that totally misses the point of the assignment? (Names are fictional.) I got hundreds of steps walking circles around my classroom just waiting for something to go wrong. But then I noticed something both troubling and exciting.
     When I was nearby, students would ask me things, sometimes legitimate things, sometimes silly ones. They would turn to me to settle debates or help with a grammatical question or whatever else. However, by the time I circled the room again and came back, they had settled many of these issues on their own. What, then, was the purpose of my pacing the room? To make myself feel better? To appear busy in case an administrator popped in? To create the illusion of control over a group of students who were functioning perfectly well on their own?
     In my next class, I stayed in my seat. And you know what happened? The class did just fine. I'm sure some students got away with a few minutes of off-task behavior, but the fact remains that they were solving problems on their own better than they ever did when I was making myself constantly available for help. When I did eventually check in with my groups, they were working together, thinking critically, and getting their assignments done.
     I've seen a lot on Twitter lately about our obligation to be firecrackers in the classroom. To be constantly engaging, up, moving around, maybe even getting rid of our desks entirely. If that's your style, go for it! But if, like me, the universe is telling you loud and clear that you need to sit down, sit your butt down, and don't feel guilty about it. It just might be exactly what you (and your students) need.