Atlas of the Heart in the classroom

I recently read Brene Brown's newest book, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of the Human Experience. Brown's work is always a powerful tool for reflection for me but I generally think about it more for my own friendships and family relationships. While I had plenty of those moments while reading Atlas, more so I kept coming back to the classroom and implications of this work for educators and schools. Rather than one long post with all my thoughts, I’m going to generate several shorter posts covering the most salient connections to teachers, students, and school.

Restaurants and classrooms. 

In the first chapter of Atlas, Brown talks about the maybe not so coincidental fact that many of the people who work on her team have all had extensive experience working in restaurants. She characterizes servers as people with "hustle" who understand the importance of teamwork and collaboration. When she described someone seeing a sugar packet on the ground and walking over it because it's not their job, his, she says this is a sign that they are not a good fit for her team. I chuckled at this scenario, thinking about how often I pick up stray papers, water bottles and other scraps as  I walk down the hallways in school. Given that I worked in restaurants, I'm probably a bit biased to agree with Brown's view of servers as hardworking and committed to doing whatever is need to make the whole operation run smoothly.

Brown draws on two restaurant expressions to describe the difference between the emotions of stress and overwhelm. Stress, Brown says, is like when you are "in the weeds" as a server. Being in the weeds is when you are falling behind in your tasks and you feel temporarily like you can’t catch up. Overwhelm, or being “blown” is when you have such high levels of stress that you almost can’t perform at all. You are so overwhelmed that you are almost frozen and hardly know where to even begin accomplishing your tasks,

This comparison caused me to reflect on how teachers ask for help and how helpful I can be as a coach.  In the restaurant atmosphere, if someone says they're in the weeds, as a fellow server I'd ask what they need and step in and start pouring drinks, bringing food or whatever they needed to a table for them. Basically I'd start doing a few of the very simple tasks, none of which are hard or require tons of thinking but add up to what feels like an insurmountable job. In the classroom this might be something as simple as making a few extra copies, passing out some papers, helping a student or couple students get caught up on what they're missing or helping them find the work in the computer. 

If someone was blown, in a restaurant another server likely couldn't take over because they  have their own tables which is why the kitchen manager generally steps in that situation. Similarly, if a teacher has reached a day of being blown, or even a single class period, a coach could step in. They could go to the bathroom or take a walk and it's just understood that I will remain in their classroom and take over. Because this is a predictable situation, I probably even have a few back pocket activities at the ready for each grade that I can have kids do if I know what the activities they had been planning to do. As Brown says in this chapter, if someone has reached the point of being blown, they are not in the head space to step in and explain all the details of their lesson plan. Just as a the kitchen manager sends the blown server away for a break instead of asking them all the things that need to be done, a teacher might need this same relief from the environment altogether. They need a brief period of "non doing,” which Brown described as time when they can calm down and return to a state where they are not totally cognitively overloaded.

When I was in the classroom I created quick ways for my student groups to let me know they needed my help or did they did not. Modeled after the ping pong paddles I had seen in the Bubba Gump restaurant, each group had a paddle with a green side that read “Go Ms. Gray, go” (we’re good, no help needed) and a red side which read, “Stop, Ms Gray, stop,” (we’d like your help). The fact that my 6th graders actually used this silly method is one of the messy reasons I adore 6th graders!  The paddles came to mind in this section because I realized they were an explicit way for my students to identify when they needed me to intervene and when they wanted to be independent.

Reflecting on my own coaching, I am always most hesitant to step in start helping  in newer teachers’ classrooms, mostly because I never want to appear as if I’m taking over because they are incapable. I have the easiest time recognizing if a teacher is in the weeds or blown when I know them really well and we’ve already developed a relationship. Although I offer support to all the teachers I work with, we’ve definitely never established a formal way to ask for support. Paddles would certainly be over the top, but I have been wondering if there is some sort of signal to establish if the teacher wants me to step in during class. I even thought about giving each teacher a small laminated picture of some weeds on one side and heavy wind on the other side for them to discretely display if I’m in the room and then I can just jump in. Probably that’s overthinking it and it’s as simple as having individual conversations with newer teachers at the start of the year to directly ask them how comfortable they feel with me jumping in mid-class. Either way, Brown’s restaurant comparison of stress and overwhelm helped me think about the levels of support teachers need in different situations.  

Every teacher has a class/day where they find themselves stressed and in the weeds and asking for and accepting small bursts of help should be a reliable source of support. Being blown, or totally overwhelmed, though, feels like it could have larger consequences when teachers aren’t provided the “non-doing” time away to recollect themselves. Maybe teachers use a sick day to give themselves the time away they need or perhaps they show up late for a common plan session and aren’t in the right frame of mind to plan productively. Teaching is mentally and emotionally taxing work, so a coach’s support couldn’t eliminate these scenarios altogether, but this excerpt from Atlas has had me thinking more about what I can do to support teachers more actively to make sure each “shift” runs as smoothly as possible.

Missing Instructional Mentorship

Over the last several years,  I have noticed both a growing impatience with teachers as well as an oversimplification of how to do incredibly complex things, such as build relationships or engage and empower learners. Often times teachers receive feedback in the form of directives to differentiate, establish better routines, or to include student voice and choice, with little modeling or support for teachers. It can be easy to fall into the nostalgia black hole of how much better things used to be, so while trying to avoid that path, I've been thinking about what changes might account for impatience and oversimplification. As a result, I've been reflecting a lot lately about my most influential mentors when I was a young teacher as well as what role mentorship plays in my work as a coach.  Ultimately, I believe some of the shifts I've noticed for teachers is because some of the forms of mentorship that shaped me as an educator are missing for teachers right now.  

When I was first hired as a middle school ELA teacher I had to meet with the Superintendent to sign my contract to officially accept my position.  In addition to the not so minor detail that the superintendent sat in a chair beside me rather than across from me at his desk, another moment from this meeting has been cemented in my memory. I'm sure he had dozens of other meetings and responsibilities that day, but  he patiently talked with me about teaching. He talked to me about getting students’ attention and how that can often be done more effectively by quieting down myself rather than raising my voice in desperation and gave me other sound advice for a new teacher that were drawn from lessons of his own experiences as a new teacher. At the time I definitely listened to and accepted his advice, but it wasn't until years later that I really appreciated this experience. The fact that he took so much of his time talking teaching with a 22 year old rookie who might not have made it through the year makes me grateful for this opportunity.

My first principal's mentorship began even before I officially started working under her. During my interview, she acknowledge that I didn't have any teaching experience so it wouldn't be fruitful to ask many of the questions she'd typically ask. Instead, so she drew on something I had a lot of experience in--working in restaurants. She used scenarios of how I  handled irate customers, when to ask for a manager's help, how I approached working with other servers, and more. Rather than emphasizing my obvious deficiencies, she gave me an opportunity to speak knowledgeably about what I did know. This was the only interview I exited feeling like maybe I actually could do this work. With some perspective, I can see that what she did for me in that interview is exactly what we want to do as teachers with our students; meet students where they are and build on the extensive real world knowledge they bring to the classroom.

      Once I began working for her, my principal's mentorship continued. She freed me from duties so that I could observe other ELA teachers who served as models for classroom management and strong instruction. Our staff meetings often had professional readings about instruction, included  text-based discussion protocols, and tangible techniques to implement in our classrooms before the next staff meeting. At times we examined student work, shared lessons and best practices. Professional Learning Groups didn't appear in our district officially until almost ten years later, but she certainly ensured we were a group of professionals learning together. Like all my best teachers from my K-12 education, I still have and reference some of the readings and materials she provided us. On a more individual basis, I greatly appreciated the conversations I had with her after she had been in my classroom.  She seemed genuinely curious when she asked questions about the lessons she had observed and also named very specific actions during the lesson that were positive. For example, rephrasing a question in a different way to elicit more student responses. She offered small but practical teaching advice. Specially, I remember she commented on increasing my wait time after posing a question. This was something, she said, that she always struggled with as well so she got into the habit of slowly tapping each finger on her leg or arm one at a time to remind herself of that time. Even when I'm facilitating a PLG for adults, I still use this strategy to remind myself to slow down and allow people time to process and speak.

A    

       A little later into my career I had an assistant principal who served as an incredibly effective instructional leader mentor. He visited my classroom often and stopped by my room to informally talk to me about instructional decisions I had made. Eventually he introduced me to the Universal Design for Learning framework by connecting specific elements he saw in my classroom to the guidelines of UDL. Our conversations were fueled by curiosity, respect, and reciprocal learning.  Aside from having a profound effect on my classroom, his mentorship as an instructional leader also solidified for me that teacher professional development must be a priority in a school and that it works best when classroom teachers and administrators collaborate to actualize a plan.

I feel fortunate to have had mentors who exhibited both high expectations and patience with me as a teacher. They weren't simply telling me I needed to build relationships with or engage my students. They were doing those things with and for me. It is this  human element of teaching and the network of mentorship  that feels like it is missing for teachers right now.  Being present in my classroom was an essential element of the mentor relationships I experienced and for some (likely many) reasons, this seems as if that's not as common right now. It has begun to feel as if it's not even possible right now, as if there are so many other burdens placed on administrators that being in classrooms feels like a luxury more than a priority. 

Recently, I've been wondering whether the coach roles are intended predominately to provide the type of mentorship I received early on in my career. It has certainly never been explicitly communicated that way, but as we increase the number of coaching positions it seems that coaches are more likely to be in classrooms frequently. It follows, then, that coaches would be more likely to have conversations about instructional moves and decisions with teachers.  I'm unsure, though, if this relationship has the same school-wide impact as strong relationships  teachers/admin formed on discussions about the complexities of day-to-day teaching.