First Newsletter! What a Journey
Season’s Greetings!
For my first newsletter, I’d like to share the evolution of AuthenTEACHcity, a professional endeavor with roots in both the COVID-19 pandemic and my own personal growth. My hope is that this serves both as a balm to soothe any pressures you are feeling as an educator, small business owner, and human being, as well as offer possible applications for your practice.
It was the Spring of 2021, and we were in the depths of the pandemic. Our lives had been upended–we were stuck, isolated, and full of uncertainty. Unsure of what was coming we did what we could to move forward day by day. In the world of Education, schools took all different approaches and our students had various experiences from virtual and home full-time, to hybrid, and those who returned to the classroom. There were half days, cleaning days, rotations, cohorts, and more. The media regularly covered the educational challenges and educators were in the spotlight. At a scale I had never witnessed in my lifetime, teachers, principals, administrators, and anyone involved in the schooling ecosystem were lauded, thanked, and revered. I remember a collective sigh of relief–finally some acknowledgement. And, just as soon as the wave of gratitude and appreciation came, it receded leaving us stranded once more.
During this time, I established AuthenTEACHcity with the hope that the new business would be an outlet for me to address the stagnant, frustrated, and disheartened feelings I was experiencing professionally. I was elated, hopeful, and even a bit shocked once I filed the paperwork and received the official documentation that I was now, in fact, a business owner. Wow, now what? Months passed, a year passed, more months, and AuthenTEACHcity sat, with a website, logo, branding, marketing, and yet, I was no less stuck than before. Throughout, I was upset at myself and very self-critical. Why couldn’t I get myself to create workshops, reach out to possible clients, or take next steps? Wasn’t this my dream? Did I make a mistake? These questions were on an endless loop and bubbled to the surface whenever I had a moment of idle time. The judgment was real.
I engaged in a variety of activities, outside of my full-time job, such as medication, breathwork, yoga, walks, biking, and eventually returned to playing soccer as much as possible all to get out of my head. It was not a pleasant place to dwell. Even though moving and getting into my body was essential to my wellbeing (more on this another time), I felt directionless. I would have an idea here and there. I would engage in bursts of creation or networking. Then I would fall back into the pattern of avoidance, or what I thought was avoidance. I also began to observe how my pattern of working and creating mirrored that of my students and even colleagues. Starting and stopping. Enthusiasm and dread.
Then, I stumbled upon the teachings of Lindsay Mack, who speaks to the cycle of creativity, including business design and service. In her material, she reminds us that learning and growing is not linear. Sure, there are segments of linear progress, but just like the practice of spiral learning which we implement regularly in our classrooms (we teach a concept and then circle back to it to reinforce and consolidate), time functions spiralically. In other words, we constantly identify a particular point of learning, move on and gather additional knowledge to then loop back and see that point in a different way. Each time you return to that first point, you’ve expanded. I must admit, it feels so obvious now, yet this framework has changed my approach in every way. I am so grateful. I learned that my “stuckness” was my gestation period, as Lindsey refers to it. What felt like listlessness and lack of direction was, in actuality, my time to absorb, process, imagine, nourish, take care, rest, experiment, etc. until I was ready to act and put my ideas into action all at my own pace. I felt instant validation and unalone in my struggle because it was all a part of the process. I had not made a mistake opening up AuthenTEACHcity. I only needed time to develop.
This patience that Lindsay preaches–critical as it was to my own journey, unfortunately, does not translate to the broader educational system with ease. There exists immediate tension when applied to school structures. For example, we have a set schedule where we must learn on a particular timeline. There are learning objectives that need to be met by certain checkpoints. Often the design of teaching and learning runs counter to how we know we learn and grow naturally. To be clear, I’m not saying the time structure we employ is useless, yet I am wondering how we can incorporate or at least make space for ourselves and our students to understand this much longer, wider, and curvier lens for learning.
How can we explicitly outline the linear and spiralic frameworks of learning with our students?
What reminders can we provide and follow when it feels like the pressure is immense and there isn’t enough time for our students and ourselves?
How can our practices and approaches create space for gestation/development? What does this look like during our prep time? Class time? Restoration? Professional learning?
Perhaps some of these questions feel familiar or even obvious, however, I think they are critical reminders not only for current times as we continue to navigate and manage the consequences of the pandemic, such as major learning loss, social distancing, and mental and emotional health, but also as a way to reframe our own approach to our learning and professional development.
It is important to note I am not dependent on my business sustaining me. I have had the ability and privilege to let my ideas gestate while working full-time and my journey with AuthenTEACHcity cannot be removed from that context. Therefore, it is all that more important, when time feels fixed and firm, to find expansiveness and give ourselves permission to be an evolving person in order to show up as authentically and wholly as possible. Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.
Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.
