I am that “last week of school” kind of tired. My body cannot get enough sleep—even if I go to bed at 8 pm after taking a 3 hour nap. My brain feels like it cannot read another poorly constructed ninth grade sentence, and my hand is cramping from the end of the year grading frenzy. There is a pile of make-up work as tall as I am teetering on my desk, and I ignore it in favor of watching Netflix during my planning period. My students think I am insane because I am still expecting them to work even though we have less than a week before the exam and, for some reason, all classroom management has disintegrated. I am tired and have no power.

But I am not angry.

All of these things could make me frustrated, but I am not irritated. I am tired, but I am not mad. I am exhausted, but I am not annoyed. In fact, as I look at my students, their faces full of inpatient anticipation for the summer, I am happy. I survived year two and, for the most part, I am actually going to miss these goobers a little. Plus, year two was substantially better than year one and that, my dear friends, makes me absolutely elated. I may not have been the best teacher every day, but I was certainly a better teacher than before.

With that being said, this is what I learned in year two:

1. You can’t be a good teacher every day. You know the old cliché, “Nobody’s perfect.” Now, I may fancy myself God of my classroom or, more humbly, the queen, but you and I both know that’s just fantasy. The truth is, sometimes I come in to the classroom and I’m tired or sick or have a migraine or maybe some kid was being annoying the period before and I want to take it out on all teenagers because they’re all suddenly really annoying. Sometimes I just don’t teach a concept well and have to reteach it later. Sometimes my directions are unclear. Sometimes, on a Friday before a long weekend, I show a movie instead of teaching because teaching just seems like too much. Sometimes I don’t do anything during planning except to sit and my desk and stare at my email. And this is all okay. Nothing is going to happen if I occasionally have an off day. I can shake it off and try again the next day.
2. Be patient. Remember what it was like to be 15 years old. To my students, my class is just something that interrupts their social life, their drama, their text message conversation, their family issues. They are not going to be able to sit still and silently for 82 minutes even though it seems like they should. They are going to whisper to their neighbor–even a good kid will–because, sometimes, they just can’t help it. And I’m okay with that. I’m okay that teaching is often controlled chaos. When your job is working with people, especially teenagers, things get complicated and crazy and weird and annoying. But that’s life. That’s just how they are, and we can’t fault them for their own human nature. Sure, they need to be disciplined but, if we spend our days expecting them to be flawless, we’d be wasting our time.
3. Repeat your classroom rules over and over and over and over. The best success I’ve had with classroom management was first semester of this school year. I had a class in which I tried something new. Almost every single day, we went over the classroom rules. By the second quarter, I could say a student’s name, and they would respond with, “I know. We’re supposed to be in our seats. I’m not following the rules. I’m sorry.” They knew the rules without a doubt. They knew them so well that they would police each other. It was beautiful.
4. Sometimes you have to just have to stop working. Pick a time and don’t grade after that. I don’t grade after 5:30. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule; we all have those busy weeks. But, for the most part, I just stop. Even when it’s piling up, I try hard to stick to that rule. It keeps me sane and allows me to do the things I want to do. Teaching and having a life is possible. I rarely brought work home to work on at night or on the weekends. I wanted to spend time with my husband and family and friends, so I did. I wanted to go to the gym, so I did. Yes, I had to work really hard during my planning period, and I usually stay a school until 4:30 or 5 every day. It’s worth it though. It’s worth it not to have to grade on the weekends.
5. Find a way to destress that works for you. (This seems obvious, but I did not do a good job with it during my first year of teaching.) People will always tell you that exercising is a good way to destress. I enjoy that, but I also enjoy watching Grey’s Anatomy (Don’t judge me.) in order to relax. I like drinking wine and playing cards with my parents. I like hiking and creative writing and taking weekend trips. These might not be things you enjoy. It’s important to find something–whatever it is–that works for you. If you don’t, you’ll go insane.

Teaching is often frustrating and we, as a whole, tend to focus on those things more than the positive things. Year 2, for me, has been all about focusing on the positive things, the things I love about teaching. Because of that, even though I am looking forward to the summer, I can’t wait for Year 3.

–Mads