Just Because You're Working Hard...

Hard work is valued in our culture. It's good to work hard. It's right to work hard. It's productive to work hard. We should all work hard.

However, working hard doesn't mean we're good at what we do. For instance, a hard-working teacher is not necessarily a good teacher. This means that putting in hours upon hours of work after school and on weekends doesn't equate to good lessons. Excessive grading and giving feedback on absolutely everything doesn't necessarily translate to student learning.

So perhaps hard work shouldn't be a measure of quality or effectiveness. It's a good measure of something - probably commitment, tenacity, and determination - just not quality or effectiveness.

If we didn't have to work hard to show that we care, we're capable, and we're productive, how else could we show it? Maybe with enjoyment, curiosity, creativity, and vitality.

The other thing about hard work is that because we really think it's a good thing, we often feel that we should show that we're working hard. And the easiest way to show that we're working hard is to be stressed. Many of us wear stress as a badge of honor.

I'm so stressed, can't you see how hard I'm working?!

And that's how we propagate a culture of stress for ourselves and others, by modeling it for each other. It's particularly problematic that teachers who model being stressed are setting up students for a life of stress themselves.

Many of us have worked in businesses or schools with cultures of excessive hard work. Though it likely wouldn't be said out loud, in some of these cultures it's expected that you work hard, work extra, and wear your hard work as stress. These are unhealthy communities with their focus in an unhealthy and ineffective direction.

Next time you're feeling stressed about work or life, try to remember that the stress is optional and not very productive or satisfying. We don't have to be stressed to show that we care, and we certainly don't have to be stressed to be productive or effective.

Instead, find something else to replace the stress with. A few things that work for me at different times: ease and relaxation, engagement, enjoyment, and passion.

I can't remember where I heard this, but stress is just fear in a socially acceptable form. The stress/fear that comes with showing that we're working hard is usually the fear of being inadequate.

Thanks so much for reading. ❤️

The Power and Possibility of Adulthood

There are some people who get into education because it's a job, but the vast majority of us are there because we're committed to something bigger than that. Often, though, our invisible intentions take over, and we unknowingly work to fulfill someone else's idea of what education is supposed to look like and be like.

What’s the most important thing - skill, ability, concept, topic, whatever - that you think our teens should be leaving high school with?

Here’s a handful of responses that we could likely agree upon:

• Confidence and creativity

• Integrity and responsibility

• Effective problem-solving

• The ability to learn challenging concepts

• Comfort in the face of uncertainty and ambiguity

• Clarity and an understanding of their passions and interests

• A willingness to express themselves and to ask for what they want

• Compassion and a commitment to something larger than themselves

• Love, happiness, and health (in other words, well-being)

As I’ve whittled down my own vision of the work I want to do in schools to awaken students and faculty to their true selves, I’ve been having more frequent conversations with colleagues about this very topic. I’m sure that all people - teachers or otherwise - have an answer, and I’ve found that my teaching has improved as I’ve reflected and refined my own answer.

It’s just that the more I’ve refined my answer, the less academic it’s continued to sound.

I think that the most important thing that students should be leaving high school with is an awareness and understanding of their fundamental nature. From this understanding, we arrive at the power and possibility of adulthood. I think there’s nothing more important than this, and with it we obtain unobstructed access to:

• Response-ability. We can creatively respond to any circumstances.

• Fulfillment and enjoyment. We are able to thrive and perform optimally.

• Ease and Love. We are able to relax into our innate well-being and bring gratitude, compassion, and true listening.

When we engage in this kind of thinking, we live more intentionally and integrity, and this matters: what’s on our mind affects our being, and our being determines our experience and effectiveness.

Intentionality is such a simple concept, yet its impact is profound.

Thanks so much for reading. ❤️

Pour Me a Pint of What I’m Really Looking For

We held a memorial service for a loved one this past summer. He was a good man and a good father. He worked hard. He was loyal. He loved traditions.

Many of us know and may be adults who struggle to experience relaxed well-being except with a substance. Like our loved one who died too young (mid-40s), we struggle to see our beauty and the sacredness of our spirit through misconceptions about ourselves and our nature.

How many of us are hooked on a substance that we know isn't giving us any authentic freedom, but the faux sense of well-being it gives is better than any alternatives we know about?

It scares me that in our mid-40s and mid-50s we aren't immune to the allure of a substance to give us what we could've learned long ago to access on our own.

We all want to satiate our desire to relax, connect, and be well. That desire is inherent in our biology and spirituality. Well-being is what our desires are meant to lead us to. Well-being is what our fears are meant to protect.

Our culture tells us that the main source of that sense of well-being is external: sex, alcohol, caffeine, and other substances and products. We fraternize in the faculty room about our drinking traditions. We plaster our sports arenas and commercial screens with advertisements. TV shows and movies often glorify it. And most of us buy into it all without question. “This day will get a whole lot better when I get a drink in my hand.”

The truth is, however, that well-being is always with us - it can’t actually leave us. You and I, whether we recognize it or not, are demonstrations of the magic and sanctity of life, but we’re lucky if we ever even notice it. It's there - we’ve just never really learned how to reliably connect with it from the inside-out.

Our students mostly meet our academic requirements in high school for English, Science, History, and Math. Let’s not have a single student enter adulthood without an understanding and ability to access their fundamental nature and capacity for well-being - that we are actually whole, untarnished, and unbreakable, from the inside-out.

I am on a mission to transform schools, and it begins with teachers, the adults already in the room.

Thank you for reading. ❤️

P.S. I don't mean to suggest that substances and our use of them is inherently wrong or immoral. What I mean to say is that it's so easy to abuse substances as a replacement for something so much better for us and others, and my work is to share access to true well-being.