4 Life Lessons I've Learned From Work

As is natural, winter break and the New Year brought with them plenty of opportunities for reflection. As is also natural, the start of the school year has left me little time to get those thoughts out anywhere other than the Notes app of my iPhone, in a jumbled mess of random sentences. Last weekend, the beautiful weather and an attempt at work-life balance inspired me to wade through some of those thoughts and start to string them together into something that actually made sense. Because my job consumes the majority of my life, the recurring theme ended up being "lessons I've learned from work". What's neat is that although I started out thinking about how much I've grown in my career, I realized that many of these lessons have also transferred over to my personal life, in ways that make me feel a little more grown up. While I continue to grow into my "teacher self", I'm also learning quite a bit about being my normal self, too. And because my generation is obsessed with articles and blogs written as a list, I'm going for it. So here it is. My first attempt at a New Year’s post, and in true Ms H fashion, a month late.

4 Life Lessons I’ve Learned From Work (so far)

1. Being a problem-solver is much more efficient than being a complainer/stresser/crier.

Let me preface this by saying while I have made tremendous strides in managing stress and tears, I have recently become very aware of how much I complain, and it’s not pretty. Complaining is easier than say, actually fixing a problem. But as I developed my vision for my kids to become problem-solvers, I’ve been more and more motivated to become one myself. Have a lot of work to do, and a weekend full of fun plans ahead? Parcel out weekday planning time, wake up 30 minutes earlier to tackle one additional “to-do”, and keep reminding yourself of the reward that is to come in the end. Minutes spent worrying, panicking, complaining and crying are minutes that could be spent being finding a solution and being productive towards an end goal.

2. Knowing your strengths is equally as important as knowing your weaknesses.

I’d venture to say the average woman is more acutely aware of her weaknesses than her strengths, both professionally and personally. I’ve read blogs, magazine articles, and studies (I realize none of these sound legit, but run with me here) that claim that women are more naturally self-deprecating than men, and everything I’ve seen in reality has confirmed this. I am surrounded by the most amazing women both in Nashville and at home, yet we still seem to always find ways to harp on our faults. (Do men do this, too?)

Admitting to and developing our weaknesses seems like the most logical way to grow and improve. But recognizing and acknowledging my strengths has been one of the most powerful forms of development for me professionally, and has also made me incredibly happy. I’m a better teacher than I was three months ago precisely because I know what I’m good at, and I enjoy using that knowledge to continue to evolve as an educator. And tackling those areas of weakness seems much more manageable when I am aware of how to leverage my strengths in the process.

This one is a little harder to transfer to my personal life, but it is certainly present. I’m more aware of what I have to offer, and what I deserve in relationships, even if it has meant getting hurt in the process. It's cliche, but I am beginning to believe that it is all a part of self-discovery. Coming out on the other side of a frustrating or painful situation illuminates how strong you are.

3. What you do and say reflects what you value.

Regardless of what you want people to think you value, they make their own assumptions based on what you say and do. I learned this lesson from spending time “on stage” in front of children who often make subconscious decisions based on what they think is important to me. In class, I am quick to say that math “isn’t just about the right answer”. But in reflecting on my kids’ progress thus far this year, I was frustrated when I realized that many of my kids still have the mindset that the right answer is all that matters. It became clear to me that while my vision for kids to value reason and thought processes and clever strategies was plainly written in a document on my computer, it wasn’t alive in my classroom. Kids heard me validate their classmates for giving accurate answers or for earning a perfect score on a quiz or a test; in turn, they sought praise and success through finding the right answer. (Which, quite frankly, is against everything I believe about math education.)

Since this painful reality check, my focus has shifted to putting the spotlight on kids who are demonstrating the characteristics of true problem-solvers: kids who are thinking creatively, showing grit through a tough problem, taking a risk by disagreeing with a teammate, finding and fixing their own mistakes, and asking insightful questions. Now, I feel confident that while they still want to ultimately arrive at the right answer, my students also know that there is so much more to math. They know this not because I say "The answer isn't what's important!" on repeat, but because it lives subtly in what I narrate and model every day.

In my personal life, I want where I invest my time to reflect what I value. I want what I say and do to align to what I actually believe and care about. I want the way I treat others to be a true reflection of just how much I love and care about them, even when it's hard or exhausting. I want the same from the people who mean the most to me, and I don't want to settle for less.

4. Numbers don’t tell the whole story.

Most of our kids come to us significantly below grade level in reading and math, which translates to failing grades in all classes. I think specifically of one sweet baby who started the year at a second grade reading level, who had never memorized his multiplication facts, and who could not add or subtract in his head (thus he could not answer virtually a single question in a sixth grade math class). Not to mention had a general apathy toward school and homework.

Because of constant encouragement, his hard work, lots of voracious reading, and daily math tutoring, that same sweet baby is a master at mental math (outperforming some of his on-grade-level peers) and has grown over 2 years in reading. Unfortunately, his report card does not reflect this incredible progress, because the reality is, he is still unable to perform at a sixth grade level. But the amount of growth we have seen in this child since day one is incredible, even if the numbers don’t quite show it.

This same rationale has been one of the most liberating for me in terms of my personal life. Being healthy had previously meant being a certain weight, not surpassing a certain number of calories, and working out a certain number of minutes a day, goals that I never seemed to quite hit. Being beautiful meant being a certain size or height or having a certain number of relationships to speak of. And being successful meant earning a certain salary or having a certain number of years of experience. But ironically, in my four years since becoming a math teacher, those numbers seem irrelevant to me. Sure, I still have moments where they seem to define me, especially when I’m allowing myself to be compared to others. But for the most part, I’ve embraced who I am and what I have for what they are worth - which is a whole lot more than any number could ever mean. Because those numbers can't explain to you how happy I am, how healthy I feel, and how thankful I am for what I have.

So despite how hard it is...

...I have learned so much from my job in the past year and a half, and I'm thankful for the ways it is developing me as a teacher and as a person. Heck, maybe all of these sudden revelations have nothing to do with work. Maybe the credit is due to my now-fully-developed pre-frontal cortex, thanks to hitting the milestone age of 25, and my newfound ability to be reasonable, control impulses and make sound decisions. Regardless, they all have stemmed from some serious reflection this past month, some of it forced through mid-year evaluations at work, and some of it a natural process that comes with welcoming the New Year.