How Perfectionism Holds New Teachers Back
The insidious internal drive for perfection, especially in the early years of teaching, is a recipe for frustration and burnout. Hereâs how to embrace the messiness of learning.
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Go to My Saved Content.As a novice teacher, John Spencer set a lofty goal for himself. In his classroom, he planned to emulate the gifted and charismatic social studies teacher whoâd inspired him as a young middle school student.
Very soon, he realized that this might be an unattainable objective.
âI wanted to be just like that teacher I looked up to. I might not have articulated it that way at the time, but my own perfectionism stemmed from that picture in my head of what âgood teachingâ looks like,â says Spencer, now an and associate professor of education at George Fox University. As those first weeks and months of the school year rolled by in a blur of late-night grading and lesson planning, the difficult realization set in that âI could never be that teacher,â and he said to himself, âI would only be a worse copy.â
Meanwhile, in Lisa Dabbsâs first kindergarten classroom, a similar storyline was playing out. âIt all started with making sure that my room was painstakingly organized, down to the last color-coded crayon holder,â writes Dabbs, who eventually became an elementary school principal. âThis carried over to the ritual of covering all my white cardboard box storage containers (no plastic for me) with decorative contact paper.â Bulletin boards had âperfect themed borders, selected by season or lesson focus.â
Lesson planning, of course, required similar attention to detail, eating up the fledgling teacherâs evenings and weekends. âIâd spend most weekends on the living room floor with curriculum tools spread around me,â Dabbs recalls. âIâd forget to eat at times, turning down social invites, until the perfect lessons were developed.â
Perfectionism, the insidious notion that we must not just be good, we must excel at everything we doâclassroom management, lesson planning, color-coded classroom supplies, and picture-perfect decorâcan be an especially powerful drive among new teachers. At its core, itâs the belief that âin order to be loved and accepted, we must strive to act and be the best at all times,â writes author and educator Elena Aguilar in a three-part . This harmful (and futile) tendency âconsumes a great deal of time and energy because every time we feel shame, blame, or criticism, our response is, âI wasnât perfect enough. So let me be more perfect next time.ââ
Unchecked, perfectionism is âa career-killer that will rob you of your joy,â says Spencer. For new teachers, it drives them to meticulously grade everything, overprepare for class time, volunteer for too many extracurricular activities, and expend energy addressing every single hiccup or misbehavior in the classroom. It leads to burnout and an .
Is it just an artifact of time and placeâa natural-enough inclination for new teachers, given their abundance of energy and hope? In search of answers, we spoke with teachers and dug into our archives to collect advice and strategies that might help novice teachers prioritize what truly matters and embrace their imperfections.
Accept the Messy
If thereâs one thing veteran teachers come to accept, itâs that kids and the day-to-day classroom environment are unpredictable and sometimes chaotic, even with extensive planning and oversight.
âWhen the wasp enters the room, when the brand-new assessment that the district purchased fails to load on the laptops, when the substitute list has been expendedâthere are multitudes of challenges that wait for teachers (and students) each day in the classroom,â writes Jason DeHart, a high school English teacher and author. But teachers arenât âlimited to the trajectory of curriculum or the next line of a script,â says DeHart. âTeachers are the scientists and artists who deal with the changing demands of the classroom.â
Starting from a place âwhere you recognize that youâre going to be imperfect, that teaching itself is going to be messy and there will be mistakes,â is key, says Spencer. Because when you always expect perfection, you lose âthat sense of joy and accomplishment. Thatâs a huge part of avoiding burnout, the feeling that what we do matters.â
Classroom Backups
Delivering perfectly tuned lesson plans every day may be the goal, but itâs also unrealistic. To fill in the gaps, create and keep updating a set of backup strategies, a tool kit for when things get messy and donât go according to planâDeHart calls it having a Plan B (or C). Some of his favorites include a wall chart with ideas for early finishers or craft projects âthat can be pulled out in a moment to continue the conversation about content in a new light.â
Collect a few simple graphic organizers, prepared question stems, or a âquickly drawn to explore a story or the that could be traced on the wall.â During unplanned free moments, have students do sticky-note annotations or journal jots responding to a text they are reading or connecting what theyâre reading to everyday life ( suggests that this links learning to purpose and drives better academic performance). Developing an evolving set of these types of strategiesâcheck in with colleagues for their favorites, as theyâre likely to have their own clever go-to strategiesâallows for quick adjustments when things donât go according to plan.
âFreedom can be found on the other side of a panic-stricken moment to engage in some of the work that weâve been meaning to get around to,â writes DeHart.
No Trophy Is Forthcoming
As a new teacher, Spencer âbelieved I had to give 110 percent in everything I did,â he . âI thought that the best teachers were the ones who arrived first and left last. I was a busy teacher, taking on all kinds of committee work and saying yes to every project.â
Eventually, when exhaustion began to take its toll, he realized that âyou donât get a trophy for packing your schedule with more projects and more accomplishments and meetings. All you get is a bigger load of busy.â He dialed back his work commitments, set a time when heâd leave the school building each afternoon, and made choices about where to go all-in and where not to.
Today, with the benefit of hindsight, Spencer advises new teachers to âmake a list of the things that have to be great, and the things that can be mediocre.â For him, lesson design and assessment were important, and conferencing with students was important. âGrading everything was not, so assessment was on my great list, grading was not.
âMy goal was to narrow it down to five key things in the important list of what I want to be good at. That didnât mean Iâd be great at them all the time, or even perfect,â he says. âBut I had to find where Iâd give 100 percent, and where Iâd give 20 percent. You just have to do that.â
The Scrapbook Years
In that first year in her âperfect classroom with the perfect lesson plan, hoping to be that perfect teacher,â kindergarten teacher Lisa Dabbs was astonished when the day-to-day reality of her new profession set in.
By year two, weary and overwhelmed by new schoolwide initiatives and sometimes-fussy students, she made the âdifficult discoveryâ that sheâd gotten it all wrong: âSeeking âperfectionâ from myself as teacher was not what it was about,â she writes. âRather, it was about the journey or progress that I made in my work as a new teacher, and about how I unpacked that learning, set goals for myself when I failed, and laughed out loud with my kids that made a difference.â
Tracking that progress, including the highs and lows as she learned and grew as a teacher, became her focus: She snapped photos of the less-than-perfect moments, and of her classroom, her colleagues, her lessons, events, and students. In that same vein, teacher Lisa H. told us via Facebook that she keeps a âfeel goodâ box where she collects nice things students give her: notes, drawings, trinkets, etc. âThen on those days when you wonder what you were thinking when you became a teacherâand you will have those daysâlook in your feel-good box to be reminded that you are loved and are making a difference.â
Dabbs also took a few minutes to journal, either daily or weekly, tracking the hits and misses so sheâd have a âlens into the who, what, and whenâ of her work, a long view that gave her perspective and a feeling of accomplishment.
Balance May Not Be What You Think
Educators are âconstantly told that we need to make sure we have a good work-life balance and that we need to embrace self-care,â writes Joe Mullikin, an elementary school principal. âTo the point where a quick Twitter search will provide you with literally thousands of self-care, relaxation, and #InvestInYourself tips.â
For all educators, but especially new ones, work-life balance is an elusive, often guilt-inducing, concept, and a very difficult equilibrium to establish and maintain, given the reality and unpredictability of teachersâ busy lives. Refusing to take work home, for instance, is a commonâbut unrealisticâsuggestion, maintains Crystal Frommert, a middle school math teacher. âIf a teacher has an unusually busy week and must take work home, is she âout of balanceâ? Itâs inevitable that work will occasionally seep into personal time and vice versa. Work and life are not a zero-sum game,â writes Frommert, who favors the system of prioritizing tasks by urgency and importance.
Other time- and sanity-saving approaches: Develop high-level strategies that put more of the responsibility for learning in the hands of students by assessing more, grading less; reducing teacher talk; and encouraging students to hunt for answers rather than immediately asking the teacher.
Meanwhile, although establishing boundaries around teacher work and personal time is important, thereâs another definition of balance thatâs worth examining. âFinding balance isnât necessarily about a scale, like a device that moves back and forth as you add or remove weight on either side,â says Spencer. âBalance is the ability to get back up when you fall down. Youâre going to fall down a lot as a new teacher.â Have you developed strategies that allow you to recover, both emotionally and in terms of time management? âCan you get back up?â Spencer asks. âAre you developing that sense of balance?â