Avoid Faulty Assumptions (#8): My students are learning—so I’m flourishing, right?

/ mkessenburg

Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash

Please note: Consistently pursuing a granular vision (aka vision script) of flourishing students, staff, and leaders helps international Christian schools to flourish. This post reflects my vision.

Students learning about God, His world, and their place in it! At international Christian schools, that’s what we want. And when students are learning, it’s an indication that staff are working effectively. However, students learning does not equal staff flourishing. Consider:

  • Is a staff member who isn’t passionate about the school’s mission flourishing?
  • Is a staff member with significant health issues flourishing?
  • Is a staff member who isn’t serving as the living curriculum flourishing?
  • Is a staff member who doesn’t have enough time to prepare flourishing?
  • Is a staff member whose workspace is way too hot or way too cold flourishing?

My response: Just because your students are learning doesn’t mean you’re flourishing.

But let me ask you some questions about flourishing staff:

Question 1: What does a flourishing staff member at an international Christian school look like to you? To me, what a flourishing staff member at an international Christian school looks like includes someone who…

  • Deeply understands the connections between their job responsibilities and the achievement of the mission and outcomes.
  • Consistently exercises.
  • Has trustworthy, supportive, respectful, empowering Christ-centered leadership (see Construct: Supportive Leadership p. 15).
  • Does professional development that is aligned with individual, department/team, and schoolwide goals (see Construct: Professional Development, p. 16).
  • Works in well-maintained facilities.

Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko

Question 2: What’s your definition of a flourishing staff member at an international Christian school? Here’s my working definition: A flourishing staff member consistently experiences the 5 elements of flourishing* and helps others do the same. Or to put it another way, a flourishing staff member consistently experiences abundant life in Jesus and helps others do the same. (To learn more, please read What do flourishing staff at international Christian schools consistently experience?)

*Note: The 5 elements of flourishing (based on ACSI’s model):

  1. Passionate purpose
  2. Resilient well-being
  3. Healthy relationships
  4. Transformative learning
  5. Helpful resources

Question 3: What faulty assumptions might you need to address about being a flourishing staff member? Here are 5 examples of faulty assumptions about being a flourishing staff member:

(1) Passionate Purpose: “As a teacher, I’m focused on helping my students learn, you know, achieve the standards and benchmarks. I like our curriculum, and the parents of my students are supportive and really want their kids to achieve academically—which works for me! I love the content I teach, and I love to help kids improve their skills. And both I and my students really like our chapel program—really great!  If it comes up, I help students with spiritual and emotional matters—which doesn’t happen all that often. Which is good because it takes time away from class time or takes time away from my prep time.”

I get it—helping students achieve the standards and benchmarks is a big challenge, and having supportive parents can add pressure to make sure students grow academically. I also get that your real subjects are your students, not the content and skills. It looks like your focus on academics is excluding you helping your students holistically—like spiritually and emotionally. 

And when you only help students academically, they can feel like you think they aren’t holistic image bearers of God, just receptacles for academic learning. ACSI research indicates that effective classroom instruction includes “helping students develop spiritually and emotionally (teaching the heart and soul, as well as the mind)” (Flourishing Schools, p. 14). To learn more, please read Spiritual Formation and Flourishing.

Please remember that to flourish in terms of passionate purpose, you need 2 things: (1) to consistently experience it and (2) to consistently help others (like your students) to experience it.

(2) Resilient Well-Being: “Yeah, teaching can be a bit nuts. A bit too challenging, but I love it. I want to help the kids learn about God’s world, I want to pursue excellence in everything, and I want to be a team player—so I help out when asked, like directing the play, filling in as recess supervisor, and teaching science—and I’m not a science person. (And if I don’t help out, I know someone else, who’s already busy, is going to get asked.) There’s so much to do! I’m all in on Christian education, I want to do it all, and it can be a bit exhausting.”

You work hard. International Christian school teachers work hard. The schedule can be so packed, it’s hard to find time to take an actual lunch break, possibly a bathroom break, let alone prep effectively for classes. To me, these things are not OK. They need to change. 

And it’s also true that you don’t need to do it all and that everything can’t be and shouldn’t be a priority—which is why Dave Stuart Jr. recommends the practice of satisficing: doing some things well enough so that you can focus on a few priorities. 

Which is also why Juliet Funt (author of A Minute to Think: Reclaim Creativity, Conquer Busyness, and Do Your Best Work) recommends you ask yourself 4 questions to guard against overdrive, perfectionism, information overload, and frenzy: “Is there anything I can let go of? Where is ‘good enough,’ good enough? What do I truly need to know? What deserves my attention?” (pp. 104-105).

And which is why I recommend that you take a step back and reflect on 3 questions: Is my workload reasonable? Does our school have a sufficient number of staff? Am I sufficiently qualified for my current assignment? If you find that your answer to any of these questions is no, schedule a heart-to-heart meeting with your supervisor.

(3) Healthy Relationships: “I’m so glad my high schoolers are learning. My efforts to provide engaging instruction and simple behavior guidelines (‘Be kind, respectful, hardworking, and self-controlled’) are paying off. And I’ve worked to provide more effective feedback on my students’ work. That’s good enough, right?” 

Your hard work is paying off! I’m glad your high schoolers are learning. And giving even more effective feedback is great! Looks like your students are doing pretty well as students, and I’m wondering how they are doing as people. I’m wondering how aware you are of your “students’ struggles at…home” (Flourishing Schools, p. 15). And I’m wondering how you would feel if your supervisor only interacted with you about work—didn’t show interest in your personal life, didn’t show concern about health issues, didn’t know names of your family members. I wouldn’t like it. I wouldn’t think your students do, either. To put it another way, mentoring students helps them flourish (Flourishing Schools, p. 15).

(4) Transformative Learning: “I’ve gotten my teaching basically down. I like how my classroom feels and runs. I like my units and lessons. I’ve got my go-to strategies. I’ve perfected things. I receive feedback annually in my evaluation—not all that helpful. And I’m not looking for additional feedback. I’m fine where I am.” 

I’m glad you’ve been working to perfect your classroom management and teaching practices. I recognize that annual evaluations may not be all that helpful to you. However, this is a school, schools are all about learning, you are a teacher (the living curriculum), so you need to keep growing. You need to ask for regular feedback on your “teaching practice and classroom management …[so you can make] adjustments in real-time” (Flourishing Schools, p. 16). Keep growing—don’t stagnate!

(5) Helpful Resources:  “I want to learn and grow. I found a couple of online classes that look good and a  conference that looks good. But then I checked the cost. Too much. Bummer.” 

I’m glad you want to learn and grow. It seems like you may think that helpful learning resources are limited to classes and conferences. And it also seems like you may think that helpful learning resources necessarily cost money. I’m a big proponent of schools providing aggressive professional development funding, and I want to share that there are a variety of helpful learning resources that are free:

Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich

Question 4: What change(s) do you need to make to develop as a flourishing staff member and help others do the same? Please keep in mind that ongoing change is part of flourishing, that you don’t need to do everything (though you do need to do something), and that you should start with yourself.

Options for changes include:

  • Deepening your understanding of flourishing and the 5 elements of flourishing.
  • Doing devotions more regularly.
  • Asking for forgiveness and help from others.
  • Setting a 3-year professional development goal and building time into your schedule to address it.
  • Subscribing to 1 or more helpful e-newsletters and/or podcast.

Note: To help yourself successfully make a change, be sure to identify what helps you.

What about you? 

  • What does a flourishing staff member at an international Christian school look like to you? 
  • What’s your definition of a flourishing staff member at an international Christian school? 
  • What faulty assumptions might you need to address about being a flourishing staff member? 
  • What change(s) do you need to make to develop as a flourishing staff member and help others do the same? 
  • What helps you make the changes necessary for being the flourishing international Christian school staff member God is calling you to be?

Get flourishing!

Michael