Recharging the Battery

Anyone with a cell phone has encountered the problem of a battery that drained too quickly and has desperately sought out a charger to give that jolt of energy to get them through the rest of the day. Stop into any convenience store and you will inevitably find some sort of display with cell phone chargers of various types. These displays usually have different types of adapters based on the type of phone you have, battery add-ons to extend the length of time a batter will last, different lengths of cords (I recently saw one that was 20ft in length), and signage that shows how happy people are to have a charged phone because of the product. The problem of low batteries is so pervasive that many businesses are providing charging stations for customers to use while they are waiting. It is obvious by these examples that battery life is a real issue for phones and as they get older, more accessories are needed in order to keep them going or we simply replace the phone for a newer model.

One would assume that if we are willing to go to such lengths to keep our cell phone battery charged we would at least extend the same courtesy to ourselves when it comes to charging our own internal battery so that we can keep going. We can walk into that same aforementioned convenience store and pick up a coffee, tea, 5-hour energy drink, or other stimulant to jolt us back to life, but the question we have to ask ourselves is whether we are taking care of our battery so that it can last longer for many years? We don't have the luxury of trading in our battery for a newer model, so it is incumbent on us to identify ways to recharge in ways that are healthy and sustainable.

In the education world, we commonly use the weekends or breaks in the academic year to recharge our batteries. In typical fashion, we run ourselves empty teaching students content, sponsoring/coaching after school activities, and helping students through some significant social and emotional issues. These activities are similar to similar to streaming videos on our phones and consuming large quantities of data. They take a toll on the battery and drain it at an exponential rate. While all of this is happening, we lose sight of our own internal batteries and we neglect them so we can serve our kids. We take work home with us, battle through sleepless nights worrying about our students, and we don't stop thinking about improving our craft because this is the nature of our jobs. Keeping this in mind, we must understand that it doesn't have to be this way. There is a way to serve our kids and also recharge our own batteries at the same time so that we aren't constantly waiting for weekends and extended breaks to serve ourselves. We can do this by focusing on our workplace culture and use it as a mechanism to recharge our batteries. The catch is that EVERYONE needs to be on board and be prepared to provide a different charging adapter for the different personalities in the building.

Talk to any adult in a school about why they went into education and you will inevitably hear a common theme. They went into education because they wanted to make a difference in the lives of kids. They will tell you that when they are working with kids, no matter how difficult they can be at times, they are waiting for a lightbulb moment to happen. They will then go on to explain personal examples they have encountered and they will light up when they tell the stories. Unfortunately, these moments take time and don't happen often enough to recharge the battery in a meaningful way.

Conversely, talk to any adult in a school about what drains their energy and a common theme will emerge. The theme switches from students to adults. They will talk about the bureaucracy of schools, a colleague they don't get along with, a parent conversation that went terrible, and the mountain of work they have no time to do. These types of things happen on a daily basis and, like streaming videos on your phone, suck the life out of their battery at alarmingly high rates of speed. The end result is tired, stressed, and burned out educators who long for the weekends or extended breaks.

The solution is clear, but it won't be easy and it is not a quick fix. It takes a sustained effort by everyone in the school to keep it going. As my good friend Nathan Eklund once said to me, "Anything left to chance will ultimately skew towards the negative." Such is the way of school culture. When everyone sees and understands their role as a battery charger in the school, the focus of the culture shifts. We begin to recognize when our colleagues need a charge and we go out of our way to lend a helping hand no matter who the person is. We begin to understand the different adapters we need to utilize to charge people up and we actually begin to serve one another because we know that others will do the same for us. We begin to recognize that our jobs are insanely difficult, but that we don't work in a bubble and others have a shared perspective. We learn that we are not just a learning community, but a community of learners who look out for one another and build each other up because their success is our collective success. We collectively believe that our own internal batteries are not consumable parts that will be discarded when they run dry, but rather, integral parts of our culture that provide power to the whole organization.