3 Ways New Teachers Can Pace Themselves

Long-distance runners have more in common with educators than you might think. There is a long road ahead, especially for educators new to the field. As with a long race, if you push yourself too hard, too early, and too fast, you won’t have the energy to finish.

In the 25 years I have been in the classroom, I can attest that teaching is a wonderfully rewarding career. This career can also include long hours, lack of respect, lack of time, compassion fatigue, and an incessant bombardment of changes.

Overexerting too soon

As a green teacher in the early 2000s, I set lofty goals of decorating an aesthetically pleasing classroom; planning differentiated, project-based, student-centered, multidisciplinary units; and grading all assignments with colorful pens and scented stickers. I ran out of energy (and money) very quickly.

Over my decades working in schools, many of my colleagues have fallen into the same weariness that comes from trying too much too fast. My colleagues and I had the best of intentions, but we couldn’t sustain that pace. Many of us burned out before the finish line.

3 secrets to Keeping A Steady Pace

If you’re new to the classroom (or feel like you’re losing your stamina), consider the following ways to keep a steady pace in order to keep going.

1. Know that perfection is the enemy of good. The perfect teacher doesn’t exist, so don’t even try. We’re humans who will inevitably make mistakes, get grouchy, and lose things—so give yourself grace. Working day after day with dozens of children can be chaotic and unpredictable, and even the most experienced educators get tripped up from time to time. When you make a mistake or a lesson flops, you are modeling vulnerability and resilience for your students.

Once I took a risk to teach exponential growth using spreadsheets. In my mind, it was going to revolutionize the concept of exponential functions for all my students. It did not. Everything went wrong: The technology glitched, I botched a formula, and the students were completely lost. In the midst of the cries of “Wait, what? I am so confused!” I announced, “This lesson isn’t working. We are going to stop.” I was embarrassed and frustrated, but in the end, we all learned a lesson in having patience and admitting when you made a mistake (although they certainly didn’t learn a lesson on exponential growth that day).

2. Do what really matters. According to legend, economist and philosopher Vilfredo Federico Damaso Pareto noticed that 20 percent of his pea plants yielded 80 percent of the viable pea pods in his garden. Thus, the Pareto Principle was sprouted. The Pareto Principle (or the 80/20 Rule) generalizes that about 80 percent of results come from only 20 percent of the effort.

Keep the 80/20 rule in mind when you are choosing which assignments to grade. Does every rough draft need to be graded? Would a rubric be a more efficient way to give feedback? Do all homework assignments need to be turned in, or could they be self-checked? If you are grading lengthy papers or lab reports, expedite your grading time by focusing feedback on a single skill instead of every error in a writing assignment. Explicitly tell the students what skill you were looking for.

To further maximize feedback results with minimal teacher input, teach students how to give peer feedback. On the Have a Life Teaching podcast, John Schembari interviewed Ellen Linnihan, author of the book Teacher Time Management: How to Prioritize Your Day So You Can Enjoy Your Evening. Linnihan suggests having classmates write short blurbs of feedback on strips of paper and then handing those to each student after a speech or presentation—far more robust and timely than what one teacher can do alone. The next time you have a towering to-do list or a stack of papers on your desk, ask yourself, which 20 percent portion of these tasks will most likely result in 80 percent of student learning?

3. Grow slowly. A long-distance runner, of course, must train to get faster and stronger. Educators, too, can grow stronger in their craft through incremental and sustainable change.

As a new teacher, I eagerly gathered every handout and free resource when I attended education conferences. Wide-eyed and optimistic, I planned to implement all that I had learned as soon as I got back to school. To be honest, those free resources remained piled in the trunk of my car for the rest of the year.

Over time, I learned to pick only one thing from a conference that I would try in my classes immediately. To help me remember other ideas I wanted to eventually try out, I would email a reminder to my future self using “schedule send.” For example, if I wanted to try a new approach to teaching polynomials, I’d schedule that email for a month before the unit. Spacing out ideas helped prevent overwhelm (and car clutter).

A wise colleague once advised, “Aim to improve by only 10 percent each year.” That, I can handle. The next time you start to feel like you’re running too fast and can’t run much longer, slow down. Don’t stop. But do less. Carefully choose the tasks for the most impact on student learning—the rest can take a backseat. You’ll be a far better educator when you stop trying to win the race and, rather, take your time and make a lasting difference.