Two recent developments felt significant in my professional life, and the sum of them is greater than the parts.Â
A few weeks ago, my principal informed me that the district was cutting my position as an instructional coach, and I would likely be headed back into the classroom to teach language arts in the fall. Unfortunately, this was not uncharted territory. My school districtâs annual March budget cuts claim many victims, and while its impact on me is far less dire than it is for many others who will shortly be scrambling to find employment, it still rocked my world. I would have to rethink my approach to teaching and learning, reconnect to my teaching philosophy, and reestablish sustainable unit planning, grading, and management practices.Â
But first, I needed to stuff all this away so I could continue to perform some semblance of effective instructional coaching for the next three and a half-ish months.Â
Two or three days later, a teacher reached out to me with a big ask. Several students tasked with planning our schoolâs annual multicultural assembly were feeling uncomfortable because they felt that while students of color had a platform to celebrate their cultural identities, white students did not. Furthermore, these students (who were white) realized that they felt no connection to white culture, and werenât even sure what âwhite cultureâ meant. Except for the yucky parts.
The teacher wanted some help talking to her students about this.
Eager for a distraction, I was ready to dive in headfirst. I grabbed Tim Wiseâs excellent book White Like Me, in which he grapples with his white identity and racial consciousness, and struggles with some of the same things our young multicultural assembly organizers were struggling with. I made pdfâs of some choice pages, gathered some information about how to have hard conversations about race, and drafted some questions that might be used to facilitate student learning during this decidedly teachable moment. I was feeling confident as I sent the resources off to the teacher, and gave myself a mental âjob well doneâ pat on the back.Â
Shortly after, I received a phone call from the teacher who, while appreciative, felt that âstarting with whiteness seems too intense and scary, and I think they need to first dig into what we mean by culture, race, and ethnicity, and how these aspects of identity overlap. Maybe start with step one, instead of step fifteen.â I thought ok, I disagreeâthe students ARE ready to tackle this hard thinking, but Iâve got to meet the teacher where sheâs at and honor that she knows her learners. Weâll go back to step one. But before I could have my complete thought, she hit me with the words that every instructional coach dreads hearing: âAnd actually, I think I have some clarity about what to do and I donât need any more support.âÂ
Ugh. That headfirst dive? Turns out I dove too deep.Â
My default setting as a human has always been a kind of negative script, a persistent self-deprecatory force field that was formed and fortified through decades of undiagnosed Attention Deficit Disorder. If things go wrong, itâs probably my fault. And itâs not just that I made a wrong choice or offered an unhelpful suggestion, itâs that my identity is wrong and unhelpful, and everyone knows it. Applied to my current situation, the spiral goes like this: My coaching work was ending, and now that the brief and doomed distraction of coaching this teacher had also ended, I was back to processing fresh evidence that my job didnât matter, and that I wasnât good at it. I was back to doubt, and insecurity. Back to feeling that so much of who I am and what I do is wrong.Â
More out of anxiousness than anything else, I flipped through the materials I had gathered for the teacher that she had never needed. Revisiting Wiseâs book led me to a quote (attributed to Desmond Tutu) that I hadnât remembered from my first readthrough:Â
âYou do not do the things you do because others will necessarily join you in the doing of them, nor because they will ultimately prove successful. You do the things you do because the things you are doing are right.âÂ
Archbishop Tutuâs words made me realize that, in my instructional coach work, I have frequently been at step 15. Whenever I present professional development at my school, I remind teachers of the journey weâve been on for the last six years. Weâre ALL on step 15, and step 15 means that we are in the middle of the work, moving forward, and while we might look back at the first 14 steps, those have been resolved. We have a shared understanding. Weâve done the same work. Weâre in this together. Weâre moving on. Next stop: Step 16.Â
Sometimes, when you are at step 15, you lose sight of step 1. You lose your bearings, your foundation. In a circuitous kind of way, the multicultural assembly plannersâ challenge brought me to some of the same questions THEY had. What is at the core of my identity that informs my experience and perspective? How do I invite that core into conversation to determine which direction Iâm headed in? What role does it play when Iâm being my best self? And what role does it play when Iâm showing up in service to others?Â
Several years ago, a few instructional coach friends and I did BrenĂ© Brownâs core values activity, which helps you reacquaint with what is most important to you, and recommit to core values in your personal and professional life.Â
I decided on love and vulnerability.Â
When I chose these values, I didnât do so because I thought they were valued by others, or because I thought they would guide me to completing a task. I chose them because they form my foundation as a human. They are my step one.Â
I have some real anxiousness about returning to the classroom as an English teacher after six years of doing a different job. I find myself mulling over the same questions that plagued me before that first day of school 15 years ago: Am I going to be good at this? Will the kids like me? Will it be too much work?
But then I remember my values, and am excited to be back at step one. Step one is an invitation to realign, recommit, and reimagine a new path forward, with my values guiding the way.