When I visit schools lately it looks and feels like everything is happening at once. The term is jammed with Book Week, Education Week, the science fair, the carnival, excursions, incursions, assemblies, major assessments and a hundred other things that seemed like a perfectly good idea when they went into the calendar.
Add to that the normal joys of teaching. A class comes in off chops after something has happened in the playground, students are out of their seats, there are conversations happening that have nothing to do with the lesson and before you know it, you’re spending your energy getting everyone back on track. One thing leads to another and suddenly the day is less about what you had planned to do and more about responding to whatever is happening in front of you.
To be honest, some of this just comes with the job. Things go wrong, people are messy and that’s the reality of school life.
But when we spend most of our time responding to what is immediately in front of us, it becomes harder to create the space to think about what might make things easier further down the track.
I think that is one of the things overwhelm does to us. It narrows our view. We become so focused on getting through today that we lose the headspace to think about tomorrow.
I often ask leadership teams this question: how much energy are we spending preventing and preparing, versus responding and repairing?
The more we invest in the first two, the less we need the second two.
In a busy term, prevention can be as simple as priming students to the expectations when they enter the classroom, so you have a calm start to the session and avoid spending ten minutes redirecting students back to the task.
Preparation might mean bringing students into the conversation. If something keeps getting in the way of learning, talk about it together. Be honest about what you’re noticing and work with students to agree on one or two things that would make a difference.
It feels counterintuitive when you’re stretched. Why use time to talk together about expectations when you’re already behind on the content you need to cover?
The thing is, a few minutes now often saves far more later.
When you’re in overwhelm, the best way out is to move forward by one small step.
Choose one behaviour that would shift the feel of your classroom. Talk about it with your students. Agree what it looks like. Prime it before the lesson. Notice it. Reinforce it. Then do it again tomorrow.
