Rapids
Finding Resilience Through the Rapids
CHALLENGES, DISRUPTIONS or TURBULENCE
“Teachers are so stressed out. They’ve just got so much on their plate. And so if I can help them even just a little with that, take something off that plate or help them feel less stressed with their teaching, that feels really good. I think that at this point right now, it’s hard for teachers in our district to find joy in what they’re doing. I think it’s really challenging with limited resources, with limited everything. So when I can work with them and help them find a little bit of joy in their teaching, that’s what I want to be doing.”
In the best of times, teaching is a challenging endeavor, but we couldn’t have predicted the turbulent waters that our schools and teachers would encounter during the course of this project: reduced funding, a global pandemic, and school closures to name a few. But there will always be rapids in any journey; what struck us in our interviews was teachers’ reflections on how Artful Teaching nurtured the resilience to navigate these rapids and stay the course.
FINDING RESILIENCE THROUGH the RAPIDS
Administrators and Leaders can…
PROVIDE A NETWORK OF SUPPORT:
“Attending Artful Teaching workshops made me realize the tie in between the work we were doing with CLEAR (Collaborative Learning for Educational Achievement and Resilience) and being trauma informed as a group of educators within the school, as a staff, and how those workshops and CLEAR worked together. Arts integration and trauma informed practices really marry very well together: being arts integrated is also being trauma informed.”
COMMUNICATE VALUE, RESPECT & PURPOSE:
“The way that Artful Teaching has been communicated to teachers feels respectful of our time. It feels respectful of the fact that we should be paid for our time outside of work, respectful that we need time to process and do things if you want us to do it well, and that we need consistency of a goal that we’re working towards the whole time. I don’t feel like the district has a goal that we’re working towards other than making kids smarter… I guess getting their scores high. I’ve heard consistently that we score low, which I guess would be more of a deficit mindset. You know: we don’t have the money, we don’t have the time, don’t have the staff. But Artful Teaching has never felt like that. Who we are when we come is enough and what we bring is enough, and what we create out of those spaces is enough.”
So that teachers can…
CO-CREATE A JOYFUL COMMUNITY:
“Even though it gets more difficult as class sizes get bigger, I want to allow every student to really have a voice in the room and really be a part of what’s going on. It’s easy in the fray to lose sight of that, to remember that we’re all here for a purpose, and we’re here as a community, and everybody at the school is a neighbor. I’m trying to keep that sense of community in the school and try to keep it joyful as kids are learning.”
DEVELOP SKILLS & COMPETENCE
“There’s so much pressure to teach curriculum and to teach a certain way and to focus on data. And it’s hard to see that you can do both – be data driven and focused on student outcomes, and also do it in a way that’s enriching and promotes growth and confidence and all the things that we want for our kids that empowers them.”
REFLECTION EDDIES
Think of a rapid you have endured as an educator. How did you navigate it?
Jess shared, “Who we are when we come is enough and what we bring is enough, and what we create out of those spaces is enough.” How can an asset-based mindset about teachers nurture resilience?
What intentional resilience-building moves do you make in your work with teachers?