Finding the Time
I feel like I’m constantly rushing:
Rushing from class to class, meeting to meeting, event to event, gathering to gathering. Rushing through the curriculum, through the benchmarks, through the important lessons to get to the more important lessons.
I can hardly find the time to write and reflect, let alone keep up with household chores and touch base with my friends.
I want to live a full life, but when do I find the time to do the important things? To build relationships with my students, fellow teachers, my family, my friends…
Always looking to the next, I want to slow life down to find the time for what really matters.
Am I creating lifelong readers? Lifelong writers? Lifelong learners? Am I inspiring my kids to be better people? To stop and think about another’s perspective…
We make time for what is important.
No, making a perfect bulletin board is not important – neither is talking about the things I cannot change at school or in my personal life. It’s wasted time, wasted energy.
I truly believe we make time for what is important. It’s important for me to go to the 7th grade football game and cheer my kids on then talk about the game with them the next morning.
It’s important for me to find the time to do professional learning that truly matters – PD that feeds my inner teacher soul and propels me to keep going and doing what’s best for kids.
It’s important to take the night off, leave work at work, and take a relaxing bath. This reminds me I am, in fact, a human with human needs.
There will never be enough time for everything, but if it’s truly important I know I’ll make time for it. Every month I make time to write a check for my mortgage. But do I take the time to get to know my students better? How often am I satisfied with how well I supposedly know them? Why do I overestimate the connections I’m making with my colleagues?
There’s never enough time for it all. But there is enough time for what’s important.
The question is, what is important?
What a wonderful reminder to slow down, figure out what’s important, and focus our energies there. Ultimately I believe that’s what gives us the most energy for teaching–to declutter our teaching lives of what drains us, as best we can, and to fill it with what gives us energy.