How often do you replace your kitchen towels?
No really? Once a month? Once a year? Once a decade?
If you are anything like most it's not something you think about often. You are more likely to buy a fresh container of baking soda before you replace your kitchen towels. And yet...It's an item we all use every day. We all dig through the towel drawer looking for the towel that has the most fluff remaining to dry those dishes. Or we shuffle through the pile looking for the least faded colors and designs to hang off the handle of the oven. We will search for the threadbare ones when we want something quick to brush the crumbs off the counters or to mop up a spill on the floor. They all have a place in the kitchen.
So then why don't we think to replace them? It's not like they are horrendously expensive. It's not like they are hard to come by...they have them right there in the grocery store for heavens sakes. We could grab just one when we go in to pick up the milk and eggs! You can get a giant pack of really nice ones at Costco for not very much per towel. If you really didn't want to leave the house you could even go on Amazon and buy one there.
What happens when we do replace the dish towels? There is that freshness to the kitchen again. You feel more cheery pulling out a fluffy towel to dry those dishes in half the time. That nifty towel hanging on the oven door looks cheery and fresh. Even the spill on the floor comes up better.
When we were all fresh brand new teachers we were handed a key to a classroom and a roster full of energetic students. We came armed with the fresh set of dishtowels we had earned at teacher school. If we were lucky we got to try them out a little in our student teaching placements...but our master teacher was ever ready in the background with her set, and she always seemed to wield them with such deft precision.
Fast forward to where you are now in your journey as an educator. I expect you wield the same set of towels. Hopefully you've added to your set over time. How often do you reach for old reliable? Or has old reliable settled to the bottom of the stack, only used in extreme need? It's easy to forget to replace or augment the tricks of our trade. It's easy to get bogged down with the day to day; to forget to look beyond the pile of papers you have to grade, or the meetings you are required to attend. Regardless of your role in education...it is easy to get swept up until one day you find yourself with nothing but threadbare towels in your drawer...we call that burnout.
How do we replace our tricks of the trade towels? It can be as sophisticated as attending a conference or as simple as carving out 10 minutes of quiet time to reflect on what worked and what you want to change tomorrow. There are many ways we can seek out the professional development that will reconnect us with the joy we felt when we were brand new teachers with all sorts of grand though, albeit, untried ideas. It does mean investing a little bit in yourself, something we as educators are not terribly good at. We have a habit of putting ourselves last and all those around us first.
The intention of this blog is as the title suggests...it is an invitation. It is an invitation to invest in yourself as an educator, to reconnect with what brings you JOY in your chosen role. It is my intention to share some ideas each week to try. Play along with the ones that make sense. Leave off if they don't. It is just an invitation...
Take stock of your current place in your role. What about this role brings you joy? What sorts of professional development do you pursue to keep that fresh for your students? Feel free to start a conversation in the comments or try tweeting out your ideas to #invite2teach.
No really? Once a month? Once a year? Once a decade?
If you are anything like most it's not something you think about often. You are more likely to buy a fresh container of baking soda before you replace your kitchen towels. And yet...It's an item we all use every day. We all dig through the towel drawer looking for the towel that has the most fluff remaining to dry those dishes. Or we shuffle through the pile looking for the least faded colors and designs to hang off the handle of the oven. We will search for the threadbare ones when we want something quick to brush the crumbs off the counters or to mop up a spill on the floor. They all have a place in the kitchen.
So then why don't we think to replace them? It's not like they are horrendously expensive. It's not like they are hard to come by...they have them right there in the grocery store for heavens sakes. We could grab just one when we go in to pick up the milk and eggs! You can get a giant pack of really nice ones at Costco for not very much per towel. If you really didn't want to leave the house you could even go on Amazon and buy one there.
What happens when we do replace the dish towels? There is that freshness to the kitchen again. You feel more cheery pulling out a fluffy towel to dry those dishes in half the time. That nifty towel hanging on the oven door looks cheery and fresh. Even the spill on the floor comes up better.
When we were all fresh brand new teachers we were handed a key to a classroom and a roster full of energetic students. We came armed with the fresh set of dishtowels we had earned at teacher school. If we were lucky we got to try them out a little in our student teaching placements...but our master teacher was ever ready in the background with her set, and she always seemed to wield them with such deft precision.
Fast forward to where you are now in your journey as an educator. I expect you wield the same set of towels. Hopefully you've added to your set over time. How often do you reach for old reliable? Or has old reliable settled to the bottom of the stack, only used in extreme need? It's easy to forget to replace or augment the tricks of our trade. It's easy to get bogged down with the day to day; to forget to look beyond the pile of papers you have to grade, or the meetings you are required to attend. Regardless of your role in education...it is easy to get swept up until one day you find yourself with nothing but threadbare towels in your drawer...we call that burnout.
How do we replace our tricks of the trade towels? It can be as sophisticated as attending a conference or as simple as carving out 10 minutes of quiet time to reflect on what worked and what you want to change tomorrow. There are many ways we can seek out the professional development that will reconnect us with the joy we felt when we were brand new teachers with all sorts of grand though, albeit, untried ideas. It does mean investing a little bit in yourself, something we as educators are not terribly good at. We have a habit of putting ourselves last and all those around us first.
The intention of this blog is as the title suggests...it is an invitation. It is an invitation to invest in yourself as an educator, to reconnect with what brings you JOY in your chosen role. It is my intention to share some ideas each week to try. Play along with the ones that make sense. Leave off if they don't. It is just an invitation...
Take stock of your current place in your role. What about this role brings you joy? What sorts of professional development do you pursue to keep that fresh for your students? Feel free to start a conversation in the comments or try tweeting out your ideas to #invite2teach.