Inspiration #3: Feeling Vulnerable in the Teaching Profession

The teaching profession holds an extraordinary expectation between maintaining professionalism and building teacher-student relationships. I often find myself trying to strike a balance, but my default mode has been to keep strict boundaries and keep establishing the line between facilitator (the teacher), and learner (the student). As technology, predominantly cell phones and social media, flourish it is easy to break some of the professional walls and create opportunities for more communication, exposure, and personal connections.

Honestly, I have struggled with how much I wanted to allow my personal life exposed to my students. I think that I felt that in order keep control over classroom management that the classroom atmosphere needed to maintain the proper boundaries. Now, this doesn’t mean that I didn’t sing “Happy Birthday” to a student or talk to a student about dealing with their parents getting a divorce. I certainly have found myself mentoring students throughout the years to either get into college or aim for some other goal in their life. I have sponsored the school Gay and Pride Alliance clubs for LGBT teens at the school. I never had a problem with allowing my students to share their personal stories and struggles. That was never the problem. I was good at building a relationship with my students, but it was probably one sided, until recently.

In February 2018, my 85-year-old father-in-law passed away. I had been running between work and hospitals for the last year or two, off and on, because he was having complications. In all of that time, I never let on to my students that I was stressed, exhausted, and worried. I would like to think that I was trying to protect them from hearing bad news. I don’t know about you, but I find that kids are dealing with a lot more of the true realities of life, so I don’t want to add more worry to them. This is a legitimate reason, but if I were to be honest with you, I think it was really a way for me to feel in control.

When my father-in-law did pass away, I was not prepared. Even though he had not been well, it did not seem like he was so bad that he was going to die. So, we weren’t prepared figuratively and literally. There were no lesson plans for a sub. In fact, I couldn’t obtain a sub because they were already committed to other jobs. I was in the middle of the school year and at the beginning of the second semester. What was I going to do? I knew that I would probably be out for the week. I look back now and realize that I was both emotional and unreserved. There were no boundaries. I was in unchartered waters. I needed to be with my family, but I wanted to make sure that my students were taken care of while I was gone.

For the first time EVER, I sat down and wrote a heartfelt, open email to all of my students. I explained to them what had happened and that I was going to be out for the week. I told them that we would work out the details for the week together and that we would have to be patient each day with the lesson plans and instructions. I created step-by-step guides for my students each day because I didn’t know if they would be farmed out to another teacher’s room or have a sub. I sent some emails to individual kids to see if they could help be facilitators with the instructions and resources. Guess what? I didn’t just reach out to the A+ students or best behaved. I used this moment to reach out to some of the students who I knew had that potential or just wanted to feel helpful. We were all going to be vulnerable. As you can imagine, I had some students take advantage that I was going to be out. But, the majority of the students stepped it up. I think that they partly did it for me because we had built a good teacher-student relationship. Other kids shared with me their recent loss, so they stepped up because they could relate to my situation. Some did their best and that was because they knew I was going through a tough time. Either way, I found that opening up more to my students was not as bad as I thought it would be. In fact, it reminded me that we are just the same. We all just want to connect and feel a part of something. In this case, we were all a part of solving a solution when someone was having a rough go of it.

Researcher and story teller, Dr Brene’ Brown, has done a TED Talk called “The Power of Vulnerability.” She says in her TED Talk that “connection is why we are here. It is what gives meaning and purpose to our lives. This is what it is all about.” Amen, sister. One of the most important parts of teaching is making a connection with our students whether in a whole group, small group, and/or one-on-one. It gives us buy in with our students, if it is genuine. We spend so much time of our lives together, we mind as well give it meaning and purpose. Connections build trust, which can lead to engagement in the classroom. Students will start treading into the idea of taking a risk and being vulnerable in the classroom environment.

If you have not done so already, use TED Talks in your classroom. They are inspirational. Even better, consider having your students create a TED Talk on a topic that they are passionate about. You won’t believe the results of their personalized presentations. I can’t wait to hear your moments of courage, connections, and/or vulnerability in the classroom. Inspire us to make more connections in the classroom.

See you Real Soon,

Erin

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