Teaching Habits that Helped me Reduce Waste of Energy

I eat four heavy meals a day from Monday to Friday. I do this to replenish the depleting energy that result from tiring teaching hours. However, I realized that eating four meals a day does very little to replenish the lost energy. To sustain my interest in teaching and to hone by teaching capacity, I had to undergo habit diagnosis with deep introspection of my daily teaching habits. Today, I will share with you some practices and habits that helped me replenish my energy from morning till evening every day, all round the seasons.

1. Have fun with students
Most of the time I was too much into rules, maintaining the order, disciplining the children, managing the class, controlling the noise level and running the class smoothly. If I am not in one of those, I was into far serious business of making myself clear. As I engage and hang on more and more to such practices, I have failed to realize what I now realized. I hardly liked what students enjoy and students seldom enjoy what I liked. I remained frustrated and under-satisfied with students most of the time. I never had time to be fully present with children and enjoy what they enjoyed. Having realized this, I started making myself available to students, being fully present with them, playing with them and doing what they enjoy. Disciplining in classroom is limited to serious behavioral issues. Student interest top my priority list whereas rules and orders are secondary consideration. Now, I feel less frustrated with students and it helped me open several gateways to opportunity which equally help me sustain my energy. 

2. Focus on enduring understandings
Curriculum are ocean-vast and activities are too many. Many of the curricular elements are irrelevant and unrealistic. I tried to take students through all the elements of curriculum in my first and second year of teaching experience. My observations are nothing new and groundbreaking,  but they are noteworthy. Any attempt and effort made to run-through or cover all contents of curriculum is laborious and disastrous. I failed miserably. It’s what wrestlers call it “Don’t try this at home” thing. I am never-ever going to achieve it, I fathomed. Since third year of my career I adopted ‘cut the crab’ strategy. In better and friendly phrase it is term ‘less is more’ and ‘fewer the better’ ideology. With adoption of this strategy, I selected the most important elements of curriculum which I call it as ‘enduring understanding’ and delivered to students. Students enjoyed and I enjoyed. Ideology of ‘less is more’ and ‘fewer the better’ paid off well. These western ideas rescued me. This way I was able to reduce unnecessary dissipation of energy and save myself from career burnout.

3. Golden silence and golden opportunity
Angela Watson, who is a teacher and author once said, “I ran my mouth so much as rookie teacher…” I usually start my lesson either by recapitulating, brainstorming, or explaining the concept which then proceeds to giving examples and solving sample questions. In due course of time, before going to students’ share of activity, I would have spent 25 to 30 minutes of the allocated 40 minutes (simply by talking). Talking found its way despite the well crafted plan because, at the back of my mind, often unconsciously, I always felt the need to explain, re-explain, and again explain in different words in the name of making concept(s) clear. My students will be often gazing either blankly or unenthusiastically. I had ran my mouth too much as well. Any realization without change is not a realization. Thus, I enforced 'golden silence and golden opportunity' as way-forward move.  Golden silence is referred to teacher’s silence and golden opportunity (cliché of the town) is students’ opportunity to talk and discuss ideas. Since I realized that talking too much drains too much energy and doesn’t convert to smart investment, I started to teach less and give more opportunity for students to do and talk. I intervene only when necessary. It saved me and  most importantly, it saved my students.

These three simple teaching habits that I changed after thorough introspection and consideration served as paradigm shift which helped me keep myself alive, rejuvenated and energized for most of the teaching hours.