Overwhelm is a bitch!
This is “overwhelm”, and It's horrible
The issue of stress and overwhelm is so pervasive in teaching that we have tended to take it as a given.
Don't you just hate that feeling that there's too much to be done and you never seem to get to the end of it? I think what really gets us down is that feeling that we're not doing as good a job as we know we're capable of, even though we're working our guts out.
This is “overwhelm”, and It's horrible.
I believe that all kaiako want to do a good job. We all want to see our ākonga flourish and be excited about learning. We want to be good colleagues, too, playing our part and working as a team. We want our people to be proud of the work we do, proud of their tamariki and mokopuna. Society places huge expectations on us to perform well and shape the people who these mokopuna will become.
I used to have this recurring nightmare where I'd be at the beach with my family and out of nowhere the waves would push right up over the sand and engulf everything - picnic blanket, kai and kids! I'd frantically try to get to my babies, grabbing at everything as it washed past me until the terror rising in me would jolt me awake. It'd take a few moments for me to snap back to reality and know that we were all safe at home.
Maybe you've had that kind of nightmare too. It's a signal from your brain that you're feeling out of your depth - overwhelmed. So when your body is speaking to you, you should take heed.
The first thing you need to get a handle on is how much of what you are doing every day, every week or every term is actually even necessary. I can pretty much guarantee you that there are more energy efficient ways to do a lot of what you do.
Try this: keep a list of everything you do over at least a 3 day period. Yes, hoha, I know, but the information will be mind-blowing, trust me. You’ll find that many of the things you do are done out of habit because it’s “how it’s always been done”, not because it’s the most efficient way to do it. I could list a bunch of things but I’ll save that for another blog post.
Now, let me introduce you to the Pareto Principle. This is a sort of rule of thumb formulated over time (originally through observation and research in the field of economics) which asserts that 80% of outcomes result from 20% of input. It's a ratio that has been observed across many other fields from sports to software development, commonly called the 80/20 rule.
If we apply the 80/20 rule to the work of a kaiako we would expect to see that 80% of ākonga learning (the outcome) is a result of 20% of your mahi (the input). The inverse of this suggests then, that 80% of your mahi creates only 20% of the impact on outcomes for ākonga. Think about it for a moment. Most of what you do each day has relatively little to do with ākonga achievement. Ouch!
Maybe that's not so surprising? Consider that list of things I suggested you compile (but you probably won’t because you think you’re too busy). Even before actually listing what your day looks like you know, instinctively, that reasonably only 20% of it directly impacts ākonga development. So why bother with the list? Because it will help you to pinpoint some things that you could possibly focus on to change.
In fact, I put it to you that changing a mere 20% of what you do could have an 80% impact on your sense of overwhelm.
I’ll just leave this here.
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