Tag Archives: reflection

The battle beyond

Yesterday I wrote, ‘The battle within‘ and said,

“The battle within is greater than the battle beyond.“

And while I firmly believe this I am seeing countless tweets from educators and educational leaders across different districts, provinces, states, and international borders, talking about the overwhelm and exhaustion of their role in a pandemic. The challenge ‘beyond’ is taxing the battles ‘within’ and burnout seems endemic.

I’ve seen comments like:

“I can’t sleep thinking about how much I have to do.”

“I have no time to exercise or take care of myself.”

“I have to take the weekend off.”

“I asked for help but it isn’t coming fast enough.”

“I’m in my second year teaching and I feel I have to quit.”

“I’m tired of just doing an adequate job.”

“This is unsustainable.”

“I won’t make it to June at this pace.”

“My students deserve more, but I have nothing more to give.”

Here are a few suggestions I hope can help:

  • Take care of yourself. Busy times are exactly when self care matters most. Everything you do for yourself during these times will give you the energy to help and provide for others… but more importantly, you will just feel better!
  • Ask for help. It’s ok to let others know you need support.
  • Collaborate. Find others who can share the load, and find energy by working with others.
  • Reduce your own expectations around work load. What can you do to reduce marking, or to provide assessment that is student rather than grade focussed? Example: Instead of giving a test that takes 10 min. each to mark, give a 1-1 assessment that takes 5-10 minutes. You and your students will both get more out of the experience.
  • Take body and brain breaks. Have fun, while recharging yourself and your students.
  • Turn off work for a set time each night… be militant about this. Go for a no technology walk with someone. Put a block of time in your calendar. Play a board game.
  • Do something creative.
  • Meditate daily.
  • Get to bed early.
  • Exercise. Suggestion: Try to do a quick workout early in the morning… get your heart rate up for 20 minutes to start the day.
  • Pack healthy treats that you enjoy, so that food breaks are rewarding in more ways than one.
  • Connect with friends digitally. Your digital bubble need not be small just because your face to face one is.

This is a time when the battle beyond can overwhelm the battle within… so make intentional efforts to care for yourself and not only you, but those around you will benefit!

The battle within

The battle within is greater than the battle beyond.

It is challenging to realize that our ultimate enemy is ourselves. Our vices vary. Our demons come in different sizes. But they come from within, not from outside.

In today’s Daily Calm meditation, I heard this quote worth contemplating, “You can close your eyes to the things you do not want to see but you cannot close your heart to the things you do not want to feel.”

Anger, frustration, jealousy, hurt, upset, sadness, embarrassment, pride, guilt, shame, fear, regret, anxiety… These are all things that we can not simply close our eyes to when we feel them. We rarely have complete control over how deeply we feel them. But we can decide how much we fuel them. How much we let them burn us up.

I chose my words carefully when I said, “We rarely have complete control over how deeply we feel them.” If I feel sad, I can not easily make the sadness disappear. Just like when you shut your eyes in direct sunlight, light shines through your eyelids, so too does an emotion like sadness seep in as you try to block it out.

Sometimes it’s better to feel than it is to block emotions, even if they are negative. Embrace the emotion and let it come over you. But how long do you allow this? At what point does the emotion take over? At what point does a feeling like sadness or anxiety or grief become an enemy within? At what point does it take control of you?

‘Don’t be sad.’

‘Don’t be anxious.’

There are few words that can be said with good intentions that could be worse than saying one of these phrases to a person feeling those emotions.These worlds only magnify the emotion’s hold on a person, who desperately wants to escape the overpowering feelings that are burning inside.

So if it is a battle within, how does one fight it? I’m not sure I have an answer that works for others. What works for me is to play with the ideas that bring those feelings to me. I imagine the emotion being first worse and then better. Not just worse but horrific. How much more could it hurt, how much worse could it feel. I take it to places further than it could possible go. Then I weigh how bad I really feel. Then I think about how I could feel better.

That’s how I battle. I shine the light brighter than I can look at it, then look away and the brightness seems so much less intense. I don’t try first to look away, I look more intensely, and then I choose to look away. Then it feels less like a battle to fight and more like something I have fought and moved on from. But I also don’t pretend it’s gone, I simply care less that it is there.

I don’t pretend this always works, I don’t imagine it would work for everyone, but I seldom spend time on battles I see others struggle with… and I’m sure some of my battles within are battles others could handle with ease.

I think it’s true for most everyone that the battle within is greater than the battle beyond. But I also believe that these battles need not be as big as we make them.

How are you doing?

Really, how are you?

What are you doing to take care of yourself?

Who are you making an effort to connect with, to call rather than text, to see on video rather than just hear on an audio call?

What are your eating habits like?

Are you following an exercise routine? Going for walks?

Are you getting enough sleep?

Are you asking for or seeking help if you need it?

We have more to offer others when we first care for ourselves.

Share your work

Here is a wonderful (first) blog post by Marcus Blair (@MrBlairsClass):

Teaching Ancient Greek Philosophy in a 21st Century Classroom

The lesson shared is on Stoicism for Grade 12 Philosophy, but there is a bigger lesson: Share your work!

I’m sure that to create this post Marcus had to reflect far more on his lesson than he had any time before writing. So, in the process of writing, he not only helps others, but helps himself too.

He made a fan out of me, but even if no one read the post, it still would have been a valuable exercise to write it. The fact that others like myself get to benefit as well is a positive by product of sharing work on a blog.

Keeping Derek Sivers idea of ‘Obvious to you, amazing to others‘:


I think one of the best professional development opportunities educators have is to share their work… so get blogging!

Whose problem is it?

A couple thoughts about assessment:

1. I taught Grade 9 Math for a year then after a year of only Humanities I went back to teaching Math, but for Grade 8’s. After about 5 years of teaching Math 8 I caught myself saying something as I started my unit on Exponents. I said to the class, “Every year this is the hardest unit and the hardest test that I give you.” I had to say it out loud to realize what I was really saying.

What I was really saying was one of two things, either I wasn’t doing a good enough job teaching this unit, or I was giving students much too hard of a test. Looking carefully at the test, I realized it was a bit of both. Because I had taught Grade 9 and new what was coming, when I looked at the test I realized that I was expecting students to know the content at a Grade 9 level… I was ‘preparing them’ for what’s to come. In every section of the test I had questions that started out with basic Grade 8 outcomes, but questions got gradually harder and always ended up with a couple (or more) questions that expected them to exceed what was required in the curriculum.

It was my problem, not theirs, that they struggled. I was pushing them to learn hard concepts at a very high level and testing them so that they all had to be competent at a higher grade level just to get a decent mark. My intentions were good. The outcome and experience for students who were not strong in math were not so good. I reworked my test that year, and some of my teaching as well.

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2. This isn’t one I’ve done, but my daughter has faced this. Last year in her university French course, the professor said, “Nobody gets an ‘A’ unless they are native speakers”. He then proceeded to give my daughter ‘B’s in every assignment, no matter what she did, and what feedback she used to improver her next assignment… that is, until her final exam. In her final exam, the marking was blind (the teaching only saw a number, and not the students’ names). On that exam, my daughter got an ‘A’.

If our job is to teach students, and improve their work, then what are we telling them if our message is, “You aren’t good enough to get an ‘A’.” … Is this not also saying, “I’m not a good enough teacher to help you improve.”? What message does this give to a student who is always striving to do her best and is a high achiever? What message does this give to a student who is struggling? Whose problem is it when every student that comes to your class isn’t good enough for an ‘A’ both before they arrive in class, and also after you have been their teacher for a semester?

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Assessment isn’t just measuring progress, it’s also measuring teacher expectations, and it’s up to us to make sure those expectations are realistic and fair.

Documenting your life

It occurred to me last night that a daily blog is an interesting way to document your life. It’s not a true journal, like a diary, because there are things I won’t share because it’s public… However it is a document of my thoughts and it opens a door into the things I think about.

I’m basically at a point now where I look back at old posts and some I remember writing and some I don’t. The blog is documenting thoughts I don’t even remember having. Have you ever looked back at a piece of writing and not remembered writing it? It’s kind of a weird feeling.

Kids today are doing this in different ways. They are sharing videos on TikTok, photos on Instagram, and even memories on Snapchat. Yes, even on Snapchat, the app where everything disappears, there is an option to save your video and Snapchat will share your ‘memories’ with you each year, like us old folk see on Facebook.

We are documenting our lives in digital, social spaces. Some of these spaces will disappear over time, and we will lose a piece of our histories. I no longer have my Ning and my Wikispaces memories archived, I can’t even remember some of the names of the apps that I stored memories on, that no longer exist.

But some will survive, some will get archived. While a paper journal can disappear, digital footprints might stick around for a very long time.

Nostalgic for Twitter of the past

I’m a huge fan of Twitter. I love it enough that I wrote an ebook about how to get started with it. I use it as a learning tool. I connect with amazing people on the platform, and I have made some wonderful friends along the way.

But recently I’ve struggled to stay engaged. It seems that anger is ever present. Fear is a persistent theme. Teachers with limited resources are asking others to help #clearthelist of teaching resources and items they want others to purchase for them on Amazon. I can’t even begin to talk about the vile that surfaces in political tweets.

I’m lucky that I’ve taken the time to create a great Twitter List of people I most enjoy conversing with and learning from. This reduces the distractions of things I don’t enjoy. But I just can’t help but wonder where tools like Twitter are heading, compared to where it came from?

Beyond sticking to my closed list, and ignoring the rest, I’m not sure how I will engage with Twitter going forward? I used to use it to fill me in on news, but the things that trend upward seem too negative. I used to go to my timeline to find engaging articles to read, now I spend more time editing my choices to focus on, rather than actually reading any links.

Maybe I lived in a safe bubble in the early days of Twitter, shielded from everything except my interests in education and learning? Maybe I allowed too much in? Maybe the tool itself is inviting the wrong kind of engagement? Maybe it’s time to take another break?

The Twitter of old was a really special place, and after spending some time on the tool this morning, I’m feeling nostalgic about what it used to mean to me.

A break and a lapse

Well I ended up taking just over a week off of my Daily Ink, with plans to do some writing outside of this space. I didn’t. I did have a wonderful break, including from social media, and I’ve been very slow to return. I also listened to a couple books for pleasure and truly enjoyed the break.

That said, I really didn’t write anything at all, and I’ve let my email completely pile up. I don’t feel bad about this, it has felt good to let go of things. Even today I slept in, had a really slow start and am sitting with my laptop in my back yard enjoying the sun and sipping coffee as I type. So while I’m going to make some observations about how I’ve wasted some of my time, I’m not doing so with any guilt, I’m just making observations around my expectations versus reality.

Writing: In about 9 days of not writing daily here, I ended up making 3 notes in my phone regarding the other writing I wanted to do. I can’t say that it wasn’t on my mind but without a routine and setting time to intentionally sit and write, it just never happened. I planned to do what I’m doing now, enjoying the sun outside while writing, but I never actually dedicated specific time to do so. My rest and relaxation never seemed to include taking time to write.

Meditation and exercise: I missed 2 days of meditation and 2 days of exercise (one of them being the same day) thanks to not having a regular routine. I had a long streak on my Calm app broken, but I started a new one yesterday. Last nights workout was minimal and it took me way too long to do so little. Again the lack of a routine hurt me. Still with respect to exercise, 5 days of workouts in a week is pretty good and I usually take at least one day off anyway.

Diet: I’m not on a diet, but I try to eat well and for the start of the year I was regularly doing intermittent fasting (14 hours minimum) 5 days a week. Covid ended that and I’ve never really recovered, but the amount of junk I’ve eaten the last week is horrible. I forget to eat then gorge on junk and my upset stomach has been telling me that I need to get my eating under control.

Social Media: I didn’t miss it. Not even Twitter. I thought I was going to take a break from news as well, but I didn’t although I should have. I’m disheartened by social media right now. It is polarized to the point the facts and reality no longer matter. Call-out culture, angry Karen videos, quick fixes, miss-information, anger, hate, pandemic fear… it seeps into my timelines and make me want to close my accounts.

The week+ of being off is over, and “I’m back”. While I enjoyed the break, I look forward to building a more consistent routine of fitness, meditation, and writing again, with a hesitation to spend much time on social media for a while yet. It’s funny, I thought I would need to stop writing here to get into the mood to write elsewhere, but in reality I need to keep writing and just choose to write more, (and actually make it part of my routine). I’ve enjoyed myself during this break, but I also lapsed a bit in the routines that I’ve built over the past year and a half, and I’m ready to build these positive routines back into my summer schedule.

Our online persona

No one shares all of who they are online. We share snippets, frozen moments, and smiling images. Some share to learn, others to reflect, others to seek attention. What’s clear is that we are not our public or online persona.

Writing and sharing daily, I’m keenly aware that I share a lot more than others do. How is this perceived by others? I’ve had some surprising feedback, some of it good, some of it disappointingly bad. I’ve even had it questioned if this was somehow taking away from my work day. That would have made me laugh if it wasn’t, at the time, so upsetting. I wrote a scathing retort that will probably never leave my drafts. It was cathartic enough just to write it.

And that’s what I’m reflecting on now, what do we chose to share and what do we keep to ourselves?

What do I keep to myself? What do I blog about? What do I expose? What do I hide?

A few years ago I went through 6 months of chronic fatigue. My family and coworkers knew, they had to know because I wasn’t running at full capacity no matter how hard I tried… but I didn’t really share any of this online until I found out it was from an extreme Vitamin D deficiency, and I was on the road to recovery.

I can remember going to a conference once and meeting a blogger whom I read regularly and admired. I was so excited to meet this person who ended up just being an ordinary guy who really didn’t want to talk about anything I was interested in talking about. It was a huge let down. This is especially true because before meeting him, I’d connected with so many amazing people at conferences who felt like instant friends, and whom I loved meeting face to face. I had met so many people that I felt I knew, and who exceeded my expectations as wonderful human beings. This guy just let me down.

But did he? Did he let me down or did I expect too much? Had I built him up to be something he wasn’t? Did I imagine him to be more than he was? Did I imagine my online interactions meant more to him than I should have?

On the flip side, who have I let down, disappointed, and even unintentionally ignored? Who has met me and thought, ‘Oh, that’s not the guy I thought he would be… that’s not the online Dave that I know.’

Whether we want to admit it or not, we don’t put our whole selves online. We refine our online persona by intentionally editing things out. We may not see ourselves the same as the Instagram teen deleting images that don’t get enough likes, but in some way we are one and the same. We choose to put some things ‘out there’ and we choose to leave some things out.

I have a friend who shares the most incredible photos of themselves having a wonderful time on Facebook, who I know is unhappy and struggles with depression.

I have another friend who in the past over-shared a tremendous amount of information about themselves. I was concerned and mentioned this to them. The response: “I’ve had people thank me for being so honest, and sharing things they are afraid to.” They were over-sharing in my eyes, not in theirs. It was beyond my comfort zone, not theirs. It was an uncomfortable level of sharing for me, not for them.

I can see that we are not our online personas. They are different than us. Even though this persona can say a lot about us… they don’t always say what we think they say.

How intentionally different to you is your online persona?

Do I keep going?

I was looking forward to celebrating a year of Daily-Ink on July 16th… however, I just checked and my first daily ritual post (this time around) was on July 6th, 2019. The anniversary has come and gone!

Do I keep going?

I think so.

I need to make some changes though. I’m not happy writing for the sake of writing. If I don’t have something worth saying, I don’t want to fill the (public) page for the sake of filling the page. That said, if I skip a day here and there, I know what will happen: I will get busy, I will put writing on the back-burner, I’ll miss more days, and my daily habit will disappear.

I know myself enough to know that if I don’t commit to do this daily, it will not be something I’m consistently doing a year from now.

I know so. I know that I will keep going.

What I might do is skip a day or two, here or there, with respect to choosing to write publicly for my blog. What I won’t do is skip a day of writing. As long as I’m honest with myself and dedicate to writing every day, I’ll be happy. It took a long time to finally get my Daily-Ink going, and now over a year later… I’m not going to stop.