My Secrets to Surviving the Teaching Profession

My Secrets to Surviving the Teaching Profession

After working for thirty-three grueling years in public education, I finally reached the finish line!  In this initial blogpost, I reveal my secrets for making it to the end.  Hopefully, what worked for me can work for you too!

Those of you who are teachers are all too aware of the many negative factors in our chosen profession that make us wish that we could have retired yesterday:  unrealistic expectations from administrators and parents, declining academic readiness of our students, overwhelming demands on time and effort required to implement a bloated curricula, inadequate textbooks that periodically change according to a fixed adoption cycle, having no voice in key decisions affecting teachers, demoralizing treatment by immediate supervisors who often lack appropriate interpersonal skills . . .

A few months prior to my own retirement, I asked eight of my colleagues if they still enjoy teaching.  Not surprisingly, all of them shook their heads with saddened facial expressions.  One teacher in her early 40s confessed that she often finds herself CRYING as she drives to work in the morning dreading the seemingly insurmountable obstacles that prevent her from actually teaching her students--my heart sank when I noticed tears welling up in her eyes. Unfortunately, the informal survey of my peers only served to affirm my own feelings of frustration and those of many others who have left the profession. Collectively, the growing dilemma of teacher attrition is now costing the United States upwards to $2.2 billion annually.

How I Did It

My secret to surviving for so long in the teaching profession is actually due to several things, but the following four were by far the most critical:

Blessing from God - I give all the glory to God Almighty for giving me the wisdom and fortitude to persevere in the teaching profession!

Contrarian Personality - Although this can be a liability, if used with discretion, taking a contrary position or attitude can actually be beneficial to you and your students.  Whenever someone told me that I couldn't do something (like getting an autistic child to stay on-task for more than 2-3 minutes), I often took it as a personal/professional challenge and would think of ways to prove the person wrong!  In other words, there was no such thing as "can't".  In most cases, I succeeded in disproving such naysayers. Whether or not they conceded or even recognized my accomplishment wasn't important.  My success was not based on what others thought of me, but what I knew I could do to benefit my kids.

Think Outside the School - Teachers are often vulnerable to assuming a group mentality of "knowing how", especially when it comes to anything related to teaching children.  This self-limiting tendency can interfere with the discovery of new ways of overcoming problems in the classroom.  If you're already beginning to experience teacher burn-out, you have nothing to lose so give this a try!  Don't limit your knowledge-base to what's discussed in the lunchroom, what you read in the monthly union rag, or what you hear on CNN.  Instead, refresh yourself by listening to successful individuals at conferences, TedTalks and helpful online forums.  These resources can often provide you with new, field-tested ideas that can be immediately implemented to improve the situation in your workplace.

Project-Based Lifesaver - The best lifesaver for me was a personal project in which I set out to develop a "better mousetrap" for teaching my students to read and write.  As you can see from this website, my alternative mousetrap is the direct result of my not only having a contrarian attitude, but also being daring enough to apply my own knowledge and experience in new and exciting ways.  The incredible results obtained by using Intelligent Intervention brought a deep sense of accomplishment to both my students and me, despite the absence of any recognition from school administrators. Our personal successes enabled us to see through the obstacles to what might possibly lie ahead.  While this may sound corny, it actually worked well for us!

NEXT TIME:  I'll be starting a new series, Behind Closed Doors, describing in detail the rapid progress of underachieving students who benefited from Intelligent Intervention.