To mark the release of her new book, Be Fabulous: The Reading Teacher’s Guide to Reclaiming Your Happiness in the Classroom, Jennifer Scoggin, a.k.a. Mrs. Mimi of the education blog It’s Not All Flowers and Sausages, shares her advice for how to take a step back and remember what’s important.

So we’re back at it again. Summer flew by and back-to-school season will soon be a thing of the past. Is there a new trend-du-jour at your school? Does it have a fun acronym? Does it necessitate many meetings? Does it make you feel crazy and as if you are being asked to toss aside everything you know and love to make time for “The Hot New Thing” that you, personally, aren’t too sure about? Or maybe you are sure of it, but are being asked to do it all, like, yesterday, and you already feel as if your restful summer never happened.

Inspiration meets overload

Can I take you back a bit? Back to the summer when the days were long and time was your own? To be nerdily honest with you, I actually relish summer as a time to read a professional book, catch up on back issues of The Reading Teacher, or browse through online articles that make me reconsider my own practice. It is my form of self-selected professional development … but with cocktails or a cup of hot coffee … or bathroom breaks. All of the above seem luxurious to a teacher.

My learning journey this summer focused on close reading, particularly what it can look like in the lower grades, with an emphasis on making cross-curricular connections. I managed to read two amazing books (complete with vigorous head nodding and rampant highlighting), and a handful of both print and online articles that felt really practical and classroom-oriented. Toward the end of the summer, my nerdy reading carried me off into the world of educational apps and how to add a technological spin to my thinking about close reading. As I share this with you, it all sounds very inspiring, professional, and productive—you know, very what’s-hot-in-education-right-now.

But in reality, these moments of professional growth and reflection have been punctuated by moments of sheer panic. I worry about how to fit it all in. I feel frustrated by my actual resources and their potential to thwart my best-laid plans. I am curious if these new strategies will actually make a positive difference in my students’ ability to read. I consider what I can take out of my day to make room for these new ideas. Before I know it, these questions can quickly lead me down a shame-spiral of self-doubt in myself as an educator. How did I not integrate more technology this year? Why didn’t I think of this before? Ugh! I should have used this new amazing app during my social studies unit in March … what was I thinking? Cut to me dissolving into a puddle of self-doubt. And this is me all by myself on my porch in the summer. Not me at work under pressure and knee-deep in beginning-of-the-year paperwork and administrivia.

It’s all about confidence

Friends, this line of thinking and rampant self-doubt are not what is hot in education right now. As a result of my own panic, I would like to propose the following: Let’s make confidence in our own ability as educators what is hot this year. We already know a great deal about best practices and what is right for our students. We have read many professional books and come a long way in our own methods. We have taken tidbits away from various professional development workshops or conversations with colleagues.

We know things. This is step one in having a bit more confidence in ourselves as educators—recognizing that we have come a long way from where we started (whether you started last year or 20 years ago) and, therefore, possess a great deal of professional knowledge already. It is time to own what we know!
Of course, because we are professional and amazing, we also want to further ourselves and improve upon our practice. Teachers are notorious for having a continuous need to add new ideas to their instructional toolboxes; it is one of my favorite things about us. We just have to find a way to do this that doesn’t make us want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

So step two in having a bit more professional confidence is taking the time to consider our own priorities and beliefs as educators. Which new ideas are in line with your goals for your students? Which new strategies work well with or pump up the volume on practices you already have in place? Which new reading helped you further shape your beliefs about the teaching of reading and, therefore, needs to find a place in your instructional day? There is no need to throw out all you have done in the past to make room for the new hot trend in education. However, there is a need to consider the new hot trend in education to determine how and in what way it might find a place in your classroom. How can these new ideas help you on your journey to becoming the teacher you have always wanted to be? It is time to own your beliefs about what it means to be a teacher!

Time management is key

Finally, no matter how confident we are in what we know and where we are going as educators, time is always a force to be reckoned with. Sometimes I want three more hours with my little friends and, other times, I cannot get out of the door fast enough. It is what it is. There is a temptation to let our new ideas run wild; and as our professional goals run wild, so does the proverbial To-Do List. I have created To-Do Lists of such staggering proportions that they have actually sent me into a catatonic state of un-productivity, meaning there are so many items on the list that I don’t know where to start and already feel as if I have failed.
So, rather than letting our plans for self-improvement become too big too fast and blow our confidence out of the water, let us consider step three: Set small goals for yourself. What piece of this fabulous new idea of yours can you accomplish next week? What piece can you accomplish next month? What piece should you put off for next semester or next year? Write these goals down. Don’t overpromise or do more than you can realistically handle. It is OK to move slowly and to celebrate small successes. It is what we want our students to do and so it should be good enough for us, too. It is time to own that we are human.

So to sum it all up, remember this: Own what you know. Own what you believe. Own that you are human. What is hot in education this year? You.

Jennifer Scoggin (a.k.a. Mrs. Mimi) is the director of the Connecticut branch of LitLife and a consultant in schools. She holds a doctorate in curriculum and teaching from Teachers College, Columbia University, and has been an IRA member since 2011. This column originally appeared in Reading Today magazine. Members can read the rest of the magazine in digital form and non-members can join IRA here.