What's Working? What Needs More Attention?

     The last two weeks have been a professional whirlwind. I have found myself short on patience, short on time, and short on motivation to engage in the act of meaningful teaching. It's probably one of the oddest seasons of my short career, and it got so bad that friends/colleagues that don't see very much of me are pointing out that I seem to be in a funk.

     I spent some time on the phone with one of these friends last week, before I decided to take a mental health day, and discussed my frustrations and lack of motivation. She prompted me with the questions that have become the title of this post: "1. What's working? 2. What needs more attention?" I have decided to answer these questions, not just for my professional situation, but all areas.

Dad-ing

1. What's Working? This season of my life has probably been the most prosperous as a dad. I have a more meaningful relationship with my son, we enjoy each other's company more than ever, and I haven't had to put him in time out very often, which was becoming quite the drag in this household. Getting to watch my son grow and enjoy the world around him is definitely working right now. I feel that our relationship is full of love and mutual understanding, as much as you can have with a two year old, and it is such a positive.

2. What needs more attention? I feel that I need to spend more time working with my son learning things, which sounds funny coming from a teacher. I think that my son is at a point where he can really start excelling at learning new things, so I need to embrace that and find new things to spark his curiosity and thirst for learning.

Teaching

1. What's working? So far, I feel that there isn't much working with my teaching. However, I feel that I have been able to maintain and build relationships with some students that are less than enthused to be at school. Somewhere along the way I defaulted to my base "kids over content" mentality, which is what I try to convey everyday, but if the classroom is burning down around me I try to maintain relationships at the very least.

2. What needs more attention? Just about every professional aspect of my life needs more attention. I haven't written *good* lesson plans to follow in weeks, my assignments are flat, I'm relying on canned content to push through my learning targets, and I'm not a presence in my classroom like I typically am. One class in particular, which it is my first year teaching both the class and the grade level, is almost a day-by-day "let's see what I can do" instead of planning for it and making it meaningful for the students and myself. This is the part of my life that seems most out of balance right now.

     It's like when I'm at work, I've tuned into a radio station that's just outside of my antennas reach--all I'm getting is every other word and a bunch of static. As soon as I roll out of the parking lot at the end of the day; I'm fine. I'm focused on other things; but not when I'm in the classroom. I exist, at this time, in a state of confusion in the classroom. I think I might have to get through the rest of my team's season and just take care of a couple of small things and I'll be back on track, but we'll see. 

Running

1. What's Working? Lately I have been pacing out right where I want to be, between 9:00 and 9:30 minutes per mile. I've started identifying possible half marathons to run and look forward to the challenge.

2. What needs more attention? I really need to start crunching the numbers and seeing how many miles I need to run to start reaching my yearly goal that I set in the first post of this blog. I can pull it off for the month of February, but I need to buckle down and get it done.

Husband-ing

Bonus section! My wife became critical that I was just focusing on Dad-ing, teaching, and running so I decided to add a Husband section!

1. What's working? Right now, there's a lot working. My wife and I are doing well at syncing up with each other and sharing the successes and burdens. We share the work and responsibilities and work under common understandings in order to get things done and still maintain a vestige of individuality. My little family is awesome.

2. What needs more attention? I feel that I need to spend more time paying attention to who my wife is as an individual; not necessarily as my wife or as a mom. She loves these roles and embraces them wholeheartedly, but I want her to know that I still see the individual and strong woman I married almost 5 years ago. I also feel that we need to start growing more in our faith as a family.

     Overall, things are going great in my life and I have a balance that lends itself towards being a good husband and dad. I just need to figure out how to increase my attention to work without it being all-consuming.

Any suggestions?