In a week I will make my grand (though perhaps reluctant) return from summer break into the daily travails of my classroom. My wife and I are fortunate in that we are able to ride together to work on most days; and when she picks me up at 4:15 and I buckle in, one of us will ask the above question. We have ten miles to cover this topic before getting home and starting supper or playing with the kids or going through the mail, and it's important to both of us to share with each other a little about what we did individually in our work that matters to us. It's not such an easy question.
How do I answer? My district would like me to answer after looking at "the data" - student scores on a variety of assessments that I've given for the day - and base the quality of my day on their abilities. Perhaps I should respond based on the amount of relative ease or difficulty faced in doing my assigned tasks? Or based on the absence or mounting heaps of frustration encountered? On my affinities for the curriculum taught? On how much I got done?
Matt Perman's book, What's Best Next, has given me a better gauge. Writes Perman:
"Productivity is about intangibles - relationships developed, connections made, and things learned. We need to incorporate intangibles into our definition of productivity or we will short-change ourselves by thinking that sitting at our desks for a certain number of hours equals a productive day."
Too often my answers have nothing to do with the intangibles. Or at least not the right ones. A good day is commonly when I can name all that I accomplished, got through a stack of student papers, avoided battles with students or with decision-makers, or got to talk about John Steinbeck.
I enter this fall with a little better perspective on the question now. Rather, a good day of work is when I spend conversational time with students and co-workers, and not solely to complain about whatever is troubling me at the time. It's when I purposefully carve out time to do good, to smile, to encourage, to challenge, and to work hard to make myself better. It's when regardless of current student grades, regardless of my calendar of duties and meetings, regardless of how I'm feeling about the work, I do the job well and with a heavenly Master in mind, not an earthly one.
And if this is the measuring stick of a good day, then I have complete control, every day, of whether or not the day is a good one. And so do you.
Tangible results look good. They feel pretty good too. But look to the intangibles for a real, lasting impact on how you spend your day.
****See below for other commentary on What's Best Next:
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