#DoOver??? Challenge accepted.

This is a review of Do Over by Jon Acuff.

As a teacher, reflecting on the last school year(s), I have started to feel that my classroom was becoming like a stale potato chip.  My teaching was losing its flavor, its savoriness, and its crunch.  Cue Do Over: Rescue Monday, Reinvent Your Work, and Never Get Stuck by Jon Acuff.  In Do Over, Acuff breaks down the four different types of workplace ‘Do Overs’ -Career Bumps, Career Ceilings, Career Jumps, and Career Opportunities- and what critical tool -Relationships, Skills, Character, and Hustle- are the necessary ones to use for each situation.  With this information in hand, I have asked myself, “How can I #DoOver my first year of teaching without leaving the school where I teach?”

Throughout the book, Acuff takes a revealing stance, not hesitating to share how his own journey in the life of a career-driven person caused him to encounter each of the four types of career do-overs.  His honesty challenged me to think reflectively about my own situation.  My stuck-ness was the result of a ceiling, but the end of the school year posed me two different career opportunities.  This book came at the opportune moment and throughout it I found many different pieces of advice and recommendations which as I continue to plan for next school year I will be deciding how and where to put them into practice.

One question that Jon poses a person should use when trying to develop the character of a servant is to ask: “How can I make you look like a rock star?”  In looking to the next school year, that is one question I will be posing to both my principal and my colleagues.  It’s a simple question, but the simple ideas are usually the ones that stick.

Jon, thank you for providing the resources at hand in one place to help catalyze a #DoOver.

It’s time to start having fun again.

Life has been stress for me lately.  Maybe it’s been that way for you too.  This school year has brought new challenges that I would not like to have to figure out how to overcome ever again.  I teach a class where a technology teacher and I (the speech teacher in this case) co-teach a class of 40+ students.  I teach two sections with one teacher and two with another.

Two weeks into the year, one of my co-teachers resigned.

Suddenly.

Leaving me with 84 students in two sections of class to educate.

Now what?

 

I would like to say I dealt with it rationally, but instead I dealt with it emotionally and let panic sink in.  Panic induced stress.  Stress induced a headache.  A headache interfered with how I performed in the classroom, as well as my general disposition.

And then I started reading…

In his book The Sacred Year, Michael Yankoski discusses a gallon of water and that if a person stretches the molecules of a gallon of water out so that they are thin as the atoms, one could cover many square miles in area with that water.  However if that same gallon of water had its water molecules stacked one on top of another, the gallon of water could reach the center of the Earth.  The question posed is whether our focus is on doing many things but only at a shallow depth or focusing on less and going deep in what we do.

What I came to realize over this weekend is that it is not my job to do the job of two teachers and do it misearbly.  It is my job to teach my content and be 100% AWESOME at it.  My gauge that I was not succeeding is that I was not having fun in the classroom.  It is time to start having fun again.  And then as if it wasn’t enough, I was listening to Propaganda this weekend and the song below came up.  I’d been so focused on the stuff that I was missing out on being present in the moment.

What are the additional things you are doing you should just stop so that you can do less things and do them 100% awesome?

P.S.  My wife’s blog has a much higher page visit count at this point, so do me a favor and pass this blog post on to someone you know who could benefit from reading this.  Thanks!  -GCG