Yinz! Yinz have got to read this book! (Yinz = Pittsburghese for Y'all. As in Y'all! You have got to read this book!) Just trying to be authentic here. I'm from Pittsburgh. It would be inauthentic to say Y'all. But really - Read this book! It's summer, and you have time now.
I was scrolling through Facebook in the midst of our shelter at home order and came upon a video of Glennon Doyle reading an excerpt from her new book. She was, of course, sheltering at home also. She was on the couch with a quilt, just like me, but was wearing a fabulous and unique sweater. I was wearing PJs. She was wearing the sweater that she had planned to wear to an in-person book tour event. I loved her voice, and the chapter she read, "Attendants", really spoke to me. It addressed the fear and anxiety so many of us were feeling at the time, and also reminded me of a specific situation I had been in during an overseas flight.
Glennon's reading sent me right off to order her book. I listened to it on Audible and added it to my Kindle library. When my podcast group, We Teach So Hard, decided to read the book together and discuss it during our Summer Reading series, I needed to order the hardcover and actually hold it in my hands. The cover is gorgeous - looks like poured paint and glitter - and the book made it easier to add tabs and to mark up. Our discussion also prompted me to replay the audiobook during my morning walks. Each section of the replay gave me a new thought for the day.
Glennon Doyle's works are all memoir and her life is nothing like mine, yet everything she writes speaks to me on a level that is meaningful in my own life. Try reading this one - I think you will find the same is true. I will talk about a few takeaways that I think are relevant to my teacher life, and I hope you will also listen to our podcast episode.
Cages
In the first section of the book, "Caged", Glennon talks about all the ways that women are caged and limited by the society in which we live. I personally think that our society provides plenty of limitation cages for humans in general. As a teacher, I have many times walked willingly into the cages set up for me. Heck, I even decorated them and added stronger locks to some. The cage of how a teacher should dress, the cage of what you can discuss with your students, the cage of standards to tick off, the cage of how parent contacts should go, and the tiny, suffocating cage of teacher evaluations. There's more, but these stood out to me. Doyle doesn't talk about the teacher life in her book because she is not a teacher (not officially anyway). But wow. So much there to apply to teaching. My teaching was pretty ordinary until I discovered the "key" of imagination. I freed myself and my students by shutting the door and just teaching. I invited my students to "live inside of their imaginations" along with me.
Keys
In the section on "Keys", Doyle talks about the inner work that must be done to break out of the cages. The one that spoke to me (other than "Imagine") was "Know". It took me years to break out of following the traditional molds of teaching because I was too frantically busy trying to stay on top of it all every minute of every day. When I finally took the time (during a seven year hiatus at home with my children) to consider what was good and not so good about my teaching practice, I was ready to return with something much better to offer my students: imagination, joy, and curiosity. I didn't need seven years, and neither do you. A short time this summer away from it all, and the opportunity to look inside is enough. Listening to the audio version of this amazing book is a wonderful trip inside yourself because every section makes you think.
Free
The last section talks about all the ways to break free and to be free. The biggest problem with all of this is that you have to be willing to "burn it down" (get rid of what you may have believed and held on to for your whole life) in order to find freedom. You may need to read, walk away, and go back later to review. Read a few beach reads in between! LOL! My application to teaching here is the ways in which I became a district leader in the last third of my career. I had burned down the expectations that were confining my imagination and thought of some educationally better ways to do things. Some of these were to trust the students to make good decisions during PBL assignments, to decide on the structure and rules of our learning community with the children rather than for them, and to add much more of the arts into my teaching in some unconventional ways.
By the way, you might not have "burned it down" on your own, but you sure broke into some new ways of delivering an education this Spring. You were expected to shift with just hours of warning from in person classrooms to online learning. From what I was able to observe from my perch in retirement, WOW! You nailed it, teacher! You are a cheetah and a prophet! (Read the book and you'll know why I have called you that!)
The We Teach So Hard podcast group would love for you to try these recipes while you make your way through Untamed. Hope you find time for peace and reflection this summer. Yinz owe it to yourselves!
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