Letting Go of Control
By: Grace Malek
Tags: Injury, Teaching And Learning, New Teachers, Gmwp, Cultural Sustainability

It’s Wednesday. The loose deadline for my GMWP Blog Post was today, and I am starting over for the fifth time. I adjust the bag of frozen peas on my elevated ankle and look out the window, fighting the urge to just give up and get in bed. This road-block in my training is similar to the road-block I’ve felt trying to write this blog post, and I’m cringing at the lack of control I have over my body and mind.

Rest and Recuperation.

I’ve never competed in anything physical in my entire life. I stayed out of sports in high school to make a little extra money working at the local custard shop, and besides, I’m more of a curl-up-with-a-good-book kind of gal. But at the beginning of the pandemic, after realizing that sitting in my one-bedroom apartment for hours on end wasn’t an option, I laced up my last season Asics and made my way down the street to the Pheasant Branch Conservancy.

Running became my temple. I am a classic overthinker, and when I’m running, I’ve found that the only things I can really focus on are my shoes hitting the pavement and moving forward. In the months filled with unknowns, I knew that as long as I was running, I could forget about all of the craziness happening around me.

At the beginning of the summer, I was inspired to set a tangible goal and signed up for the Rockin’ Brews Madison Marathon. Though I run a slow 11 minute mile, this half-marathon was supposed to be my moment to prove to myself that I could stick with something physical and finish it. But this flare up of my tibial tendonitis is taking that finish line and pushing it back miles and miles every hour that I spend on the couch and not training.

I envisioned myself breaking through the finish line and into the arms of my family and friends, proving to them and myself that I could compete physically and finish something that I started. But with three short weeks left until race-day, I can sense my moment of glory slipping through my fingers. I think to myself, if I had just stretched a little bit more after each long run, if I had just taken that one day off instead of trying to push through the pain, maybe I wouldn’t be on day 6 of resting my ankle, and I’d be back to training. There’s nothing I really can do at this moment besides beat myself up and rest, but for some reason, that just makes me that much more frustrated.

To be frank, I’m frustrated with a lot of things at the moment. Frustrated with myself that I didn’t spend enough time stretching after my runs, frustrated at my body for betraying me, frustrated that I’m heading into my third year of teaching, but I still haven’t had a “normal” year under my belt as we head into another year of unknowns. But as I write this, I realize the connection between what I’m feeling and something that was said at our meeting last week.

We were asked: “What “normal” are you pushing back on as you ascend to What We Can Become?”

As we began to talk about co-creation and reciprocal relationships, my good friend and colleague, Jen Doucette, spoke up and explained that something she was unhappy with last year was the amount of control she had in the classroom. This surprised me a little bit as it wasn’t something I hadn’t given much thought to… I mean, didn’t we pretty much lose control over everything when it came to this pandemic? She elaborated, explaining, “Reducing the curriculum to the vital parts and trying to teach online felt like I was removing so much of the balance of control from my classes.” Later when I talked with her one-on-one, I asked, “So you mean you felt like you had more control than you would have liked?” to which she replied, “Exactly.”

This definitely struck a cord within me. I am by no means a “control-freak” when it comes to teaching. I am as Type B as they come, that I might be a Type Z teacher. But I always thought that having control in the classroom was something I needed to have, even though I never really found it. My first year I chalked it up to being young and new, the second year I could blame COVID and virtual teaching, so my third year was going to be the year that I really pulled through and became the commanding presence I thought I was supposed to become. I hadn’t thought about control in that way before.

The desire for control is normal. It feels like it’s our fault when unexpected or negative outcomes happen, and we tell ourselves, “Well, if only I had…” and blame our classroom management styles whenever lessons don’t go perfectly. It’s not too different from the blame-game I’ve been playing with myself all week as I spend another day resting and recuperating from my injury. Often, teachers believe that the less control and command they have over the classroom, the worse teachers they are in the eyes of the masses. But that simply isn’t true. While having a desire for control over each and every outcome is natural and normal, and loosening our grip on that control makes us uncomfortable and fearful, it doesn’t make us better teachers to have it. Not to mention, it’s unrealistic now more than ever.

Taken August 4th, 2021 at the WWCB Summer Institute by Mark Dziedzic.

Just like with my body, there is very little I can do to get myself back on track that goes beyond giving it time and love. Hopefully by the time this blog is published, I’ll be able to say that I did have my moment and crossed the finish line, but I also need to be okay with the fact that this injury may just mean I cross that finish line a little bit later than I had planned.

In school building and in the classroom, there is going to be so much that is out of my control. So instead of grasping at straws and what I do have control over, what I can do is welcome the lack of control with open arms and become comfortable with having less of it. What I can do is focus on giving my students the time and love that they need during these insane times. If there’s something the class is struggling with that I didn’t foresee, we will work on it. If there’s a concept that their 8th grade teachers didn’t have time to get to, we will add that to the list. If there’s a discussion that seems to be really engaging that I didn’t plan for, we will have it. And maybe if the energy in the room is a little too much and we need to all go outside for a moment and just take a breath, we will do that too.

As I head into this new year, I need to realize and understand that there are going to be a lot of unknowns. The students may not be where they are “supposed” to be, they may come in with attitudes and ideas that are different from what I expect, and there may be a lot of outside factors that change my role as a teacher as I know it — and that’s okay. Relinquishing my control over the situation, handing back some of that control over to my students, is how I plan to create my little island of sanity and welcome my students into it.