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Good Educators are Experts, Great Ones are Rookies

Good Educators are Experts, Great Ones are Rookies
Do you remember your first year in education? I think on it often lately because I just started with PATINS, my rookie year*. Looking back, my letter to myself on that first day after college would be something like this:

Dear Jessica,
You can still cry every day during the first two weeks of school and it won’t be a reflection of your skill, value, or how much you will love your job. Be gentle on yourself, everyone starts here.
p.s. Stop buying everything in the Target dollar section.

My first year I introduced iPads to my students. One little girl wanted to know how to share her beautiful “I Love Mommy” themed cookie she made on an app and send it to mom. I told her I didn’t know, so she told me I wasn’t good at my job and her mother enrolled her in another school. I never touched another iPad again.

Haha, just kidding! Kids don’t care if we are rookies (being rookies themselves) and I learned to embrace my rookie-ness. We played on the app a little and decided to snap a picture of it on my phone and email it. Later I learned I could have done a screenshot, but I didn’t know that yet, this was all brand new to me. Multiply that moment by hundreds or thousands and you’ll see a typical educator’s year. Not a semester will go by that we aren’t handed something new: new policy, new responsibilities, new kids, and new chances to be true rookies in something we have never tried. Which new challenges makes us decide to suit up? Which ones do we avoid and sit on the bench, and how will that impact our students?

Andi Stevenson talks about how important it is we embrace being terrible at something new, from her own experience as executive director and rookie ballroom dancer. Rookies, she explains, turn off internal criticism and don’t fall prey to perfectionism. They are supremely empathetic towards others on their own learning curves. Being a rookie stretches mental muscles, making us approach the new and the difficult in different ways.

Sounds like an awesome educator or administrator, doesn’t it? We call those people expert learners, and these are the skills that make successful students.

Andi also speaks to something that has probably haunted all of us at one point: burn out. Being a rookie gives you the opportunity to discover what makes you happy, and that the happiness can’t come from just one source. Staff who pigeonhole themselves into one area, personally or professionally, are staff who don’t stay long in the field. I struggled with major burnout my third year, so I started some rookie tasks in my personal life. I had a milestone birthday this summer, and leading up to that day I had a list of things I wanted to accomplish, a bucket list of sorts. There were about 25 things, including:

Bake bread from scratch
Vacation somewhere new in each cardinal direction
Learn how to repair my car
Go back to school
Host Thanksgiving dinner

Some of these things I still do, some not, and some activities I eventually purchased technology to assist me.

You can watch me complete the very last thing on my list, the day before my birthday: basic carpentry. This is the beginning of my budding role as a carpenter. I'm not bad carpenter, or just a woman just playing around with some power tools, but a real carpenter. Just like our students are readers, writers, artists, and citizens. We're all just rookies right now, and given the right tools and instructions, we'll blossom.



My favorite part about education (and PATINS in particular) is that we are big fans of rookies. We have to be rookies every school year in something. Welcome to the team!  PATINS and ICAM have the coaches, the training, and the equipment to help you and ALL your students be rookies of the year. You might say we’re your number one fans.

What rookie adventure are you starting this year? How will you model your rookie mentality to your staff or students?

*warning: overuse of sports cliches
2
Simplicity
Break it… Just Break it.
 

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Friday, 29 March 2024

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