The Sustained Teacher: Wearing Your Hats (part two)
During my third year teaching, my pride got the best of me. I was a newly tenured teacher, and I was being asked by lots of important people to take on leadership roles and service positions. How flattering! I thought. They must really trust me to do such important jobs. I was building momentum at my school site, and I had no system in place to practice balance. Balance? Who is she?
Here’s the rundown of the “hats” I tried to wear that year:
School site council representative
Teaching 6/5ths (no prep period)
Head coach of a competitive robotics team
Lead Advisor to an academic honors club
District curriculum writing
All of these on top of my regular duties which included being a singleton teacher in my content area, no collaboration on site in terms of curriculum and instructional practices. I was continuing to fulfill my role as a Knowles fellow, engaging in professional development and cycles of practitioner inquiry with other new teachers. And I was teaching AP Physics for the second time, which involved dozens of hours per year writing letters of recommendation for students (past and present) applying to college.
The date was December 7, and I know it was a Wednesday because I was leaving the school site council meeting, on my way home, when again I noticed the persistent, unwelcomed negative thoughts. It had been about two weeks that I noticed I was thinking of suicide nearly every day. For weeks it felt impossible and miserable to get up in the mornings. I was seeing a therapist and psychiatrist, but felt little progress. I knew something was off when I could not stop thinking about the relief that driving into on-coming traffic would bring me. I instead drove myself to Urgent Care.
This story gets easier to tell each year because I’ve since learned to not take my intuition for granted. As a new teacher, I was often advised to practice saying yes, to nod and smile to admin, among other adages. But rarely, if ever, was I instructed by other educators to follow my gut. So if you haven’t been told yet, and you’re a new (or veteran) teacher… Here’s some advice: trust your gut.
What this experience taught me was that while I eventually came to trust my own intuition, I was not pausing to check in with myself before accepting professional commitments. I rarely, if ever, stopped to ask myself if the roles I was taking on would contribute to my own growth as an educator. I did not ask if these service positions would actually serve me.
Since then, each year I have a practice of identifying the “hats” I am choosing to wear. I do this so that I can not only be cognizant early on of what I am taking on, but I can practice caring for myself by being intentional about where I devote my energy and time. This practice involves some visual creativity, particularly in how I place each title and organize and visually represent the relationship that one position may have with another. I also use this time creating my graphic organizer to consider the relative magnitude of each role.
Step 1: What are my hats?
Start by making a list. What are the roles, responsibilities, committees, positions, teams that you are taking on this year?
Step 2: Which ones are old? Which ones are new?
Consider which of these hats might be more comfortable to wear? If you are familiar with what is asked of you in certain roles, it may be easier to take on new ones. I suggest highlighting your list in two different colors to differentiate the old hats and new hats. When it comes to newer roles, you may find that there will be more time and energy spent on the mental labor of learning what to expect, learning new procedures and responsibility--something that for an older, more familiar role you would not need to dedicate as much energy to.
Step 3: How do I prioritize them?
Which ones feel the most important? Which feel the most important? You may find a time when you’ll have to choose between them, maybe just for a day, or maybe for the remainder of the year. Think ahead of time which ones are most important to you, which hat do you more happily wear? Which hat are you most excited to wear? I suggest re-writing your list so that the more important ones are at the top. When you create your graphic organizer, these ones may appear the largest in relation to the others.
Step 4: Is there balance? What’s missing? Is there room for more?
This is an optional step, but after creating a visual representation of your hats you may still be thinking about an opportunity you may not officially signed up for. You may be reminded of that project you wanted to start, or the invitation that’s snoozed. Is there something seasonal that you can anticipate? Now would be the time to think about the different parts of the year, and how the opportunities that come up may interfere with how you wear the hats you’ve already identified.
My Hats in 2019
In 2019, my district had hired two brand new teachers to teach physics, one at my site and one at a sister site. Needless to say, as a singleton teacher who had struggled for years to achieve healthy, sustained and reliable collaborative relationships with other physics teachers, mostly due to proximity, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to work more closely with not only one, but two new teachers! I decided to take on the role of PLC lead, considering I wasn’t really going to miss anything from switching PLC teams.
I was still teaching the same content, physics and AP physics, and that hat was primary to all my others, which is why I chose to represent it as the centerpoint for all my other roles. I was involved in several different committees, some of which ended up disbanding for different reasons, which is why they ultimately ended up being crossed out from my diagram. At the point when I drew this graphic organizer of my hats, I didn’t know which commitments would take up more time, relative to others, so I didn’t cary the sizes much. Rather than using size to indicate importance, I tried to use decorative details to emphasize the ones that felt more important to me. And I used dotted lines, varying the “tightness” of the dots to represent how tied I was to them. For example, my role as a Senior Knowles Fellow, and as facilitator to the independent study science labs, were the hats I wore the most loosely. I also used different shapes to indicate different realms or spaces that those roles existed in. For example, the environment in which I fulfilled my role as member of the equity team felt very different from the environment where I performed as a physics teacher or as a PLC lead. I worked with different audiences, and so I tried to convey that through how I visually represented those titles with shapes.
There is no wrong way to do a Hats Diagram. Even if it remains a list you are still practicing sustainability by being mindful of what you’re taking on. A similar metaphor might be to consider what is “on your plate” in terms of the duties you are tied to fulfilling.
My Hats in 2020
For many reasons 2020 is a different year, some of those reasons obvious. I made the decision to nominate myself for department chair in April, and was subsequently elected by my department. When I thought about comparing my roles as PLC Lead and Department Chair I settled on the idea that they are equally important to me, and I would try my best to dedicate equal time to both, if possible. I didn’t include “AP teacher” as a hat the previous year, but I decided that when it came to designating my identity as a teacher to AP, which frankly is a system I don’t know if I’m fully on board yet, I felt more at ease with the “AP” specific prep work I do as secondary to the responsibilities I carry as a physics teacher. This relieved me of putting too much pressure on myself to achieve excellent AP score outcomes, as opposed to ensuring that every student has a positive experience learning physics in general. I chose to represent my hat as a Knowles Senior Fellow with a star, because it feels less like a hat to me and more like a badge I get to wear. After creating this draft, I felt like there might be room for more, which is why I included “book committee” with a question mark. It was on my mind, lingering from having read an email about the opportunity a couple weeks prior. And another new hat I included was that of “module designer” which is less about an identity and more of a series of tasks I hope to participate in.Which is why I used a checkmark to represent it.
I cannot emphasize enough that there’s nothing wrong with breaking the rules I’ve written for creating your own Hat Diagram. The purpose is simply to create a tool for ourselves as we practice mindfulness over what we take on each school year. And those roles may change and evolve, and we can revisit our diagram to reflect on those changes.
I hope that you are able to practice this mindful activity and that it helps you protect the joy you get from doing the job. If you decide to create your own, please share it with me as I would LOVE to learn about how this tool has supported your sustainability. You can also do a brave thing and post it to social media, and if so, you can tag me!
Instagram: @thesustainedteacher
Twitter: @bmminj
