Over the years I have discovered that I think better when I have a clean, organized space. Even the act of organizing helps relieve mental tension. Yet, many systems in my life still persist that support disorganization and I deal with these systems every time something changes, usually with the start of a new school year.
This school year brings an unprecedented amount of changes that my support systems currently have not handled well. Although I have mentioned some of these before, I will list them all in one place here. One, we have an enormous amount of changes related to Covid which have also overshadowed typical logistical operations leaving them uncertain still at the writing of this post mere days prior to the official start of the school year. Two, I will teach two brand new curriculums, 6th grade social studies and 8th grade ELA. Three, I have a supervision class for my admin degree as well as the internship and preparing for the PRAXIS. Four, I am hosting a student teacher as well as serve as a mentor for one of our new teachers. (When I started writing this entry I also thought that I would have to take a TESOL class as well but thankfully I have already taken this particular class.)
When looking at that list, I have to acknowledge that half of those items I have taken on voluntarily although to get this far in the admin program and not finish it would not make sense. Even as I acknowledge that, I know that a semester of school, either as a student or teacher or both, without plenty to do would feel aimless. If that ever happened, I would likely seek out activities with which to fill the void.
During the teacher work week, now a couple weeks past, all of the previously mentioned items piled into my brain jostling for space. Instead of using the time in each day to sort things out, I sort of shut down and did nothing save for talking with coworkers about how overwhelmed we all felt. I knew I had so much to do, so much that I did not know where to start so I did nothing.
By Friday of that week, I knew I needed to do something. I had to sort out the chaos in my head. Sort out and organizing the obligations would help me think, just like I have seen happen when I clean and organize my physical space. At the end of the day, I transformed the white board into a physical representation of my brain, listing out the things on my plate into categories. Just this one act relieved the pressure in my brain because I could see it all laid out in front of me. Hopefully this will continue to help me going forward.