A repost from last spring:
We accept classroom stress as normal, in spite of the fact that we have now found a way to teach that is not inherently stressful. Yes, the great fact about comprehension based teaching is that its nature is to be almost devoid of stress.
It is the atmosphere of striving found in schools that creates the illusion that comprehension based teaching is stressful. Yet the great unpondered fact about comprehension based teaching is that its nature is completely stress free.
Why is this? Well, all the bosses in the buildings and at the district, state and federal levels – as well as the parent bosses and the boss politicians who praise themselves – have unknowingly injected fear into our buildings. This injected fear has had the effect of plastering over the beauty and calmness of comprehension based teaching. I haven’t even been in the Pure Land for about ten years, not even for one minute.
Due to that plastering over effect, and our accepting the views of all those bosses as in some odd way valid (we want to keep our jobs so we are not to be blamed), we lose our contact with the majesty and slow uplifting grace of comprehension based teaching. We lose that real kind of human interaction that is based in happiness, which brings the best gains, and we become sad and full of stress, due to these others whom we allow to inject fear into us.
We accept what THEY say is best for the kids as real, when deeper in our minds we know otherwise, that the only real way to really reach kids in our classrooms is to relax and be with them, which jen and John and Eric and others say here often but which many of us don’t really hear, because we are drowning in stress as we swim haplessly around in the pool of false power that our colleagues have over us in these strange illusory worlds called schools, which are mentally unsafe for all who go into them.
We are so busy planning and looking over our shoulders, that we destroy our ability to love ourselves and accept our strengths (we fight so hard!) instead of just being with the kids and with one structure at a time for as long as it will go.
We accept the frenetic and fear based cultures that exists in schools as normal, and then when we get tired and depressed and we want to quit like many of us are feeling here at the end of the year, due to overwork and untenable situations with individual kids, parents and bosses, we forget how easy comprehension based instruction really is at its core.
It’s not just about having our evenings as many of us have agreed to struggle during the day so that we can relax in the evenings, living our lives half of the time we have been given. It’s about having our days, too, the days that God has given us to be happy on this beautiful blue and green planet, the one that is not colorless, the most beautiful one of all, so that we can relax with our kids and just follow those sweet natural lines of discussion that emerge without force, as the French describe in this article, which I republish here again because it holds jewels:
https://benslavic.com/blog/lart-de-la-conversation-and-tprs/
It is only the natural joy of children that can counter and diminish the building stress that we encounter every day. Without the joy they bring, we couldn’t make it through the day. We can take the lead of the children or we can accept the stress from above us in the chain of command. The decision we make will determine the success or failure of our careers.
When we choose the latter option, we become mere delivery systems for the stress and fear of those who, again through no fault of their own, hold us accountable for doing so many useless things that don’t help anyone. We don’t need to do that anymore. We don’t need to believe in that dark building-stress anymore. We can take the side of the kids, and we can teach them in a way that brings to both them and us real joy. We have the approach now!
We must remember that the stress we feel and accept is inflicted upon us from the outside by a broken and very sick system with lots of really nervous and power hungry people in it. We must stop feeling the stress in our tired bodies as if there is something wrong with us or with our teaching. There is nothing wrong with us! We are on a roll!
There is nothing wrong with us and there is nothing wrong with our teaching. There is every reason for us to carry and share great hope all throughout our profession, because of the inherent grace and power of comprehension based teaching. our careers are going to be good. If you consider what the young teachers, Angie and Carly and so many others here in our group, have done in just their first year at this, then the hope is there.
Related: https://benslavic.com/blog/stuart-smalley/