Have you ever felt like you’re just going through the motions in your teaching career? We all have; it’s completely normal. However, while feeling “stuck” or uninspired is common in education, it shouldn’t signal the end of your teaching journey.
The Problem
After teaching for a while — once the newness has worn off and you’re settled into a routine — things that once energized you seem stale. The bell ringers, the vocabulary quizzes, the Kahoots games, and the rote memorization all seem like chores rather than concrete ways to engage your students. This boredom, coupled with a lack of professional development opportunities that encourage growth, often leads to dissatisfaction, with many teachers questioning their choice of profession. You may feel burned out when all you need is a spark to reignite your passion for teaching.
Following are some actionable steps for taking ownership of your own growth:
Pursue Passion Projects
Diving into instructional topics and strategies you’re curious about can inspire their integration into your classroom. It may still be a “bad word” for many educators, but AI (artificial intelligence) is here to stay. Beyond a quick and easy way to create lesson plans, embrace AI in your teaching strategies, whether transforming elementary students’ artwork into animation or having high schoolers fact-check AI images and facts. With a little creativity and some automated help, you can make your classroom a fresh environment.
Additional ideas for integrating new ideas are implementing real-world projects for local businesses, gamifying learning in a way you haven’t in the past, personalizing learning paths for each student, leading project-based learning in a discipline where it doesn’t usually occur, or simply encouraging students’ voices and choices in their own learning paths.
Seek Professional Development
While it may be true that your school fails to offer PD opportunities that meet your needs at your particular career point, it’s up to you to fill that gap. While many opportunities come with a financial cost, many are free. Contact your state’s education association or the NEA for current programs. Moreover,many social media subject-specific groups exist that contain an abundance of free tips, ideas, webinars, and workshops. And if you do find a PD you’re excited about that requires a fee, go to your administration and ask if funds are available for you to progress in your career. This move exhibits initiative, and it’s a win-win-win situation for you, your school, and ultimately, your students.
Find a Mentor or Peer Group
Most schools have mentoring programs for new teachers, but beyond that initial onboarding, many of these programs languish. Again, social media is a great place to find like-minded educators on a free platform. Additionally, be proactive: Seek peer groups within your department or grade level. It doesn’t have to be a formal meeting, just a place to share new ideas and encourage each other. You may find that before your next staff meeting, you’re in a lively conversation about field trip opportunities or a new technology rather than complaining about how much you have to grade!
Take on a Leadership Role
The best way to break out of a rut is to lead a charge to help others do it as well. If a department chair needs filled, volunteer to lead it. If your school needs mentors, ask to serve on the mentoring committee. One of the most rewarding leadership opportunities I’ve had in teaching was to serve on my former school’s mentoring team at the national teaching conference. Not only was I able to let others around the country know what we were doing well (and what we needed to improve upon), I was inspired by the workshops I was fortunate to be able to attend, only because I was willing to take a small step of leadership.
Change your Perspective
On a day that you’re particularly dreading going through the same routine with your students, don’t. Change it up. Even though students thrive on routines and procedures, every now and then, they need to experience something new along with you. Maybe it’s reading aloud in a different way than usual, having kids work on math problems in pairs as a competition, getting them out of their seat to create something in groups or as a whole class, or getting them out of the classroom altogether.
One day a history teacher colleague of mine decided to do “quiz day” differently. After handing out the quizzes to each student, she announced that they could either do their quizzes quietly and as normal, or they could perform their quiz as a whole class. Her only stipulation was that every member of the class must be engaged in discussion for each question. Those students were still talking about that day years later (and my colleague only had one quiz to grade!).
Another time, I didn’t want to go through my vocabulary terms in my presentation as usual, so I paired the students up and told them to write down the vocabulary words. Rather than defining and/or using the words in sentences, I told them we were going on a field trip around the school and that they were to find examples instead of definitions of the words. They certainly remembered the “cacophonous” 4th grade teacher’s voice and the “juxtaposition” of the P.E. and drama teacher’s classrooms more than they would have if they’d only written definitions.
Put Your Ideas into Action
You most likely didn’t go into teaching on a whim but with a sincere desire to use your skills to enable students to grow and, ultimately, become successful and lifelong learners. I’ve always told my students that “bored” is a word for the weak. If you’re bored with something — more specifically, if you’re bored with your own teaching strategies — it’s up to you to get out of that comfy yet falling-apart teacher’s chair and reignite your love for teaching.
