For the umpteenth time, I am driving that long stretch of barren highway between my home in southwest Colorado and my father’s home in Salt Lake City. I am ready for lunch and am desperately in need of a bathroom break. I will be in Wellington and Price within a few miles so I can take care of these issues. Then I pass a green highway sign: “Wellington 25” – 25 more miles! That’s not possible! I have been on this highway forever and I’m sure I’m closer than that! Although I drive that highway regularly, it seems that every time I think I am almost there, I realize am not.

As teachers, we tend to think that as the years of experience stack up, we will somehow “get there” and we will know everything we need to know and the mysteries of our profession will be solved. Once “there” we figure we can relax and enjoy being good teachers. After nine years of teaching, I am coming to realize that each year I teach I find myself reading that road sign, yet again, that says I still have a ways to go. Yes, I’ve learned many lessons and yes, I have improved as a teacher, but I now know that the concept of getting to some destination as a professional teacher is like chasing a moving target. To be cliché, we have to remember that teaching is more a journey than a destination.

We learn and monitor and adjust, but for each new mile marker we reach, we have more distance to travel. Along my journey of nine years teaching high school, I have reached a few mile markers and I hope that sharing them will help others in their travels through teacherdom.

Mile Marker 1: Slow Down; You’ll Get There

A dear friend of mine made a career change to become the music teacher in our district last year. We spent many hours discussing her trials as a first year teacher and I found myself repeating one main piece of advice to her: you cannot know it all and do it all immediately. Like all new teachers she wanted to have stellar, creative, inspired lessons planned for every class, every day (K-12!). Remembering the guilt I experienced as a new teacher when I could not meet my own high expectations, I tried to let her know that we cannot do it all the first time through.

However, we can use a combination of packaged resources and borrowed lessons from other teachers and create some great stuff of our own. From there we figure out what works for us and what doesn’t and then next year, we do more of what works and we keep fine tuning from year to year.

In a matter of a few years, we end up with some great basic bones that we can continue to flesh out and revise along the way. If we only beat ourselves up over what we did not accomplish or what did not work, especially in the beginning, how will we ever have time and energy to celebrate the little successes we stumble on while on the way to the next mile marker?

Mile Marker 2: Change is Good

Yeah right! We have all heard it, but who believes it? Well, over the years we face changes in curriculum, administration, teaching assignments, staff members, policies, school calendars and class schedule, pay scales and so on. Then add in all the flavor-of-the-month philosophies that come around that we must adjust to and accept –Step-Up to Writing, Six-Traits Reading and Writing, Standards Based Education, Critical Friends Groups, Professional Learning Communities, etc. How do we keep our sanity when we are in a constant state of readjustment to the current new thing?

Personally, I have always hated change and I have always had a tendency to get hyper about changes in my happy little life in my school district. But I can honestly say that after nine years I have learned that these changes are usually going to happen whether I want them to or not, so I try to view them as speed bumps instead of road blocks. We can rail all we want about how much we hate standardized testing and how ridiculous next year’s class schedule is, but in the end it usually is not as bad as we think it is going to be. We do adjust. Nobody loves all the testing, but it is a fact of our lives, so why not teach the skills that the students need to be proficient and then trust they will use those skills on the test?

Of course sometimes change is not for the better and these are the times when we might have to ask ourselves if we need to make some sort of individual step like changing schools or districts to find the best fit for ourselves. Still, change is change and it can all be good if we try to have a positive attitude and just let it be sometimes.

Mile Marker 3: Everyone is Accountable

Accountability is one of those educational buzzwords that is probably overused, but I am not sure if it is practiced as much as it is preached. I think requiring accountability of our students is akin to being a fair and credible teacher. If we outline requirements and ground rules and then do not hold our students accountable for those, we lose the chance to teach real life lessons and we also lose credibility in their eyes. I truly believe students want fair boundaries that they can rely on.

I am personally quite strict about deadlines for assignments and make-up work. Yes, sometimes I feel bad that I have to give a student half credit or a zero because he or she failed to turn in the work on time, but they usually learn after one mistake, then we do not have to have the problem again. The student quickly learns that what I told them on the first day of school is true and it is always going to be true. I think from that comes a degree of trust for them. Of course they are upset when they get the low grade, but the vast majority learn that as long as they go by the rules, they will do well in my classroom, as in higher education and in real life.

I also think that by holding my students accountable on a very consistent basis helps alleviate the perceived teacher’s pet or favorites syndrome. If the students notice that the rules always apply to everyone, and that I do not grant special deals with the “good students” they come to believe I will treat them fairly, which is something we all want from our own superiors, right?

Now, that is not to say that there are never times to give a student a break, of course. As teachers we all know that our kids suffer amazing personal catastrophes occasionally, and we must be empathetic to real life challenges. On day one I also make it clear that if there is an unusual situation, they should tell me as soon as possible so that we can set about finding a solution to help them meet a deadline or find an alternative that will work for their situation. I think it is usually obvious when there is a genuine problem and not the run of the mill “my grandmother died for the tenth time this year” excuse from a student. My students appreciate when I work with them and therefore, tend to follow through as discussed.

The other side of accountability is holding ourselves accountable. Just as we expect our students to meet deadlines and follow through with what they say they are going to do, we must do the same. If I tell them that I am going to do something: be it check on a grade question, look up a confusing grammar rule or call their parent about their test score, I better do it and do it when I said I would. Again, if we want our students to trust us we must follow through.

As teachers, we often ask our students to bare their souls to us in their writing journals and discuss their personal thoughts about what they read, so we must establish a trusting relationship. Our kids often live their lives with few absolutes, so I figure that even if they only see me for an hour a day, at least I am one person they know will be consistent and dependable and they know the rules will be the same, even when the rest of the world seems upside down.

Mile Marker #4: Be Yourself

“Don’t smile until Christmas.” Remember that piece of advice about how to establish discipline on the first day? I tried it, but I am quite certain I failed. Discipline was a complete mystery to me during my first year of teaching. I am not sure exactly what I did, but I do know it didn’t work very well. I think tried to be strict and mean, but all I found myself doing was being angry over petty problems, sending kids to the office a lot and arguing with them, and sometimes their parents. Somewhere along my bumpy, unpaved road to becoming a disciplinarian I realized that all I have to do is be myself and it works out. That is vague I know, but what I mean is that while I am not “strict and mean” anymore, I have developed my own style of discipline that is a reflection of my personality. Of course my way is too individual for anyone else to duplicate, but I do have some core elements that I believe should be standard to any classroom management program.

First, while I still struggle to do this in all situations, I swear it works: instead of raising your voice, lower it. The lower tones seem to diffuse difficult situations and keep an upset student from becoming more upset and I feel more in control than when I yell. Next, handle as much of the classroom discipline yourself as you can. Only send the most serious problems to the office. Students learn that you can solve your own problems and I think it improves the overall classroom climate because they know what to expect. If you find you must punish or reprimand a student, do it as privately as possible so they are not further embarrassed or allowed to show off in front of the class.

I prefer asking the offending student to sit down with me and talk about the problem. I ask them about their version of the problem, and then tell them mine. Then I ask them what they think they could do to solve the problem and then I decide how to proceed with any punishment needed. Again, low tones and non-accusatory language works to diffuse volatile situations. Personally, as often as possible, I try to explain what is going to happen to them, then move on to suggestions that will keep them from having the problem again, and finally I let them know that I do not hate them for doing something wrong.

For example, I caught a student plagiarizing on an essay, so I followed school policy and called both she and her parent in to discuss the cheating. I showed them the evidence, referenced the school handbook on our plagiarism policy which states that the offending student will earn no credit for plagiarized work and explained the impact of the zero on her course grade. Of course, she was mortified that she had been caught and devastated by her resulting low grade, so in the end I asked her how she thought she could avoid resorting to this sort of cheating in the future. Then we discussed how she could improve her course grade before the end of the grading period. I finished by reminding her that she had done good work in the past and that she didn’t need to cheat to do well in school, but if she felt she needed extra help in the future, she should see me before and after school. And she did just that. That low moment for her taught her that she could ask for help instead of cheating when she felt insecure about her work and we maintained a strong student-teacher relationship.

Mile Marker #5: You Deserve A Break Today

Teachers are workaholics. Between planning, teaching, grading, coaching, and sponsoring, we are too busy to breathe most of the time. Then we volunteer for all sorts of extra committees and classes. When I was a new teacher, I thought good teachers had to do it all. Then, through my own overload and observation of veteran master teachers, I discovered that the best teachers had learned when to say no and when to delegate and when to just take a break.

Sometimes we just have to put our sanity and our own well being in front of our life-consuming job. We must organize our lives so that we have plenty of time to do our schoolwork and also have time away from it or we burnout. Nobody wants to find himself or herself stuck in neutral while on their teacher journey, so exhausted that they are out of energy and creativity and don’t want to go on to the next mile marker. Yes, I probably still have too many duties, but I only take on new ones if I can let another one go. After all, there is always some energetic new teacher who wants to do more – let them; they’ll learn eventually too.

While we are all on our common journey to be the best teachers we can be, we have to realize that the road will fork and meander from time to time, so we must learn from others and ourselves. Stopping along the way to reflect on where we have been can help us read our personal maps more clearly.