Smaller: What Tired Does to Good Teachers
When you're worn down, you get shorter with kids and slower to ask for help. A short pep talk for tired teachers on lighter weeks and cutting yourself slack.
The word of the day is smaller.
General George Patton wrote it to his commanders in 1944, and Vince Lombardi later hung it in the Packers locker room: "Fatigue makes cowards of us all."
Cowards is a strong word. What I hear in it is smaller. When you're worn down, you get smaller. Shorter with people. Slower to ask for help, because asking takes energy you don't have left.
You know what that looks like in November. A student asks the same question for the third time, you're trying hard to be patient, and a little sigh gets out before you can stop it. Lunch is a granola bar eaten standing next to the copy machine. Again.
None of that makes you a bad teacher. It makes you a tired one.
We don't say that out loud enough. We tell each other to push through. We say "You've got this" in the hallway like it's a password. But some weeks you don't have it, and you can't out-tough exhaustion.
Athletes figured this out. A good training plan has lighter weeks built in, on purpose. Nobody calls that quitting. It's how you keep going. (I wrote more about that idea in The Deload Week.)
You get to do the same thing at school and at home. Carry a little less this week. Pick one thing that can wait, and let it wait.
In the video, I also tell a story from early in my career: a tense parent conference, something I knew I needed to say, and the way I said it. It got loud. I still remember how awkward it was. I learned two things. Trust your instincts, and how you say something matters as much as what you say.
If you're in a hard stretch right now, you're probably learning something too, even if from the inside it just feels like learning how to get from Monday to Friday.
So this week:
Go to bed when you're tired.
Leave one thing in the bag overnight. It'll still be there in the morning. It always is.
And when you catch yourself getting small with a kid, or with a colleague who just asked for one more thing, name it in your head. That's the tired talking. Cut yourself a little slack and keep going.
Full disclosure, I'm still learning this one. Some days I'm better at it than others.
Notice it. Then give yourself a little room.
Your turn: What challenge early in your career taught you something you still use? Leave me a voice note. I'm still waiting on my first one, and I'd love to play a few on the show.
Strong is a state of mind.
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