The Realistic Approach to Being the Best Resource for Your Students
If you are reading this, we want to thank you for caring so much about your students. Thank you for caring enough to be curious about how you can be the best resource for them. Thank you for putting in the time and hard work.
If you are here, we are going to guess that you have spent hours (outside of your normal day) planning and preparing for students. You have spent nights and weekends looking for resources, pulling individualized activities, and bending over backward to try and tailor every last detail to your (oh so very different) students.
We’re here to tell you to stop.
Yes, you read that right.
No, we aren’t telling you to stop caring.
If you have been following our “Work SMARTER” series, you will have gotten lots of tips on how to deliver the most effective kind of intervention. The last letter in SMARTER stands for realistic.
We know the feeling of wanting every last detail to be perfect. We know how gut-wrenching it can be trying to create individual lesson plans for every, last person. We know the grind of working until 2:00 a.m. every night because you feel like if you aren’t, then you aren’t working hard enough.
And we know how quickly that will burn you out.
As we said, if you are here, we know you care and your students are lucky to have you. That being said, if you hold onto this unrealistic expectation that everything needs to be perfect, that every kid needs something COMPLETELY unique, and that you need to be working 16-hour days, you are going to burn out.
Our society has this twisted idea that whoever can tally up the most “all-nighters” and the highest amount of hours outside of work is the best. We need to stop tying our self-worth to these unhealthy and harmful ideas. It’s not good for us and it’s detrimental to our kids.
We see it all the time. The BEST interventionists and the ones who care the most are the ones who ultimately burn out and reach a day where they just can’t do it anymore. This is so incredibly sad. The day they burn out is the day their students lose out.
So, how can you be the best resource for your students?
Give yourself some grace.
Put the papers down.
Do something that you love.
If you do not take care of yourself, you will have nothing to give your kids. No, this is not selfish. Do the best you can, with what you have, and where you are. Don’t feel like things have to be perfect all of the time. Little, realistic changes over time will do worlds more than a sleepless night will.
Give yourself some grace. You’re already doing an amazing job.
It’s okay to be tired. It’s okay to have bad days. It’s okay to get to Friday and think hallelujah - it’s the weekend. You’re not alone. We LOVE our job, so much so that sometimes it truly doesn’t feel like working. But other days, oh other days it DEFINITELY feels like working.
So this week, we wanted to give you a break from all the resources, an opportunity for a breather, and a reminder that no matter what you’re doing - no matter what games/activities/etc you have, it’s perfect. You don’t need every activity under the sun to be good at your job.
And right now, in our office, we are in an organization and decor phase. Trying to find a “home” in this space we’ve been in for almost a year now (but seriously where has this academic year gone?!?). And in all of that we’ve been trying to find inspiration to remind us to keep going and to remind our students to keep going and so this Friday we just wanted to share that with you. Click here to download!!!
And if you want to join us to learn about how we made our intervention easier on ourselves, we’d love to see you in our totally free workshop, How to Create Systematic, SOR-Aligned Lesson Plans. This workshop will help you determine what actually needs to be included in a Science of Reading-based lesson, how to build a lesson plan based on the Science of Reading, and how to optimize your lesson plans. Plus, we’ll share our lesson planning guides!