There Are Bad Days In Teaching

We tend to ignore the bad days in education; that gives a false impression of the teaching field. Here's my bad day in year 27.

One of the problems that I have with some who write about education or some education consultants is that they speak in platitudes. It’s easy to talk about someone’s “why” or that teachers should always be positive and that every day is a chance to make a difference in a kid’s life. All of that is cute and does have some truth in it, but it does diminish the complexity of this job.

The constant, sometimes toxic positivity, can lead people to forget one very important thing about the teaching field.

It’s hard.

And, if you actually care about it, it’s even harder.

So, in an effort to be transparent and to show that even a year 27 teacher can have a bad day, I want to share this story; all teachers have bad days, even the most experienced. It’s not a new teacher thing and even the most experienced don’t all have days are full of sunshine and rainbows. Here’s my story.

It was yesterday.

This year, I am teaching a course called AP Seminar. It’s a course that I first brought into our District in 2017. While I haven’t taught it in three years, I am also the Department Coordinator so I have pretty solid knowledge base for the course. And, almost half of the students in this sophomore class are students I taught last year in ninth grade English. We are two months into the curriculum and nothing has been too difficult.

Until yesterday.

I came in with a plan to explain their group research project in which they would come up with a group topic, develop individual claims, and begin to conduct their research.

As I type that, it sounds so simple. After all, we’ve been building towards this since September. We’ve laid the foundation of developing research questions, claims, finding reliable sources, how to document those sources, and how to effectively support an argument through a specific lens.

In my head it sounded so clear. I created a quick guide to help them through the process. I would explain the guide, give some instruction and turn them loose. I figured I would do what I do best; troubleshoot with individual students during the class and offer feedback on their research claims.

The bell rang at 7:20 AM and I began with explaining the guide and reviewing what we were building towards. After about three minutes in, I could tell that they were lost. So, I doubled down and explained it again and used an example off the top of my head.

They still didn’t get it fully.

I’ve been in the classroom long enough to not panic during these situations, but I did know that my plan—or lack thereof—wasn’t working. When I asked them if I was clear and just received blank looks, I sensed that the lesson wasn’t working. When I asked if there were any questions and just received blank looks, I knew that the lesson bombed.

To their credit, they tried to complete the guide and some did understand the assignment despite my poor lesson. I can’t lie that first reaction I had was “what’s wrong with them?”

But, that lasted all of 30 seconds because I knew this was on me. I didn’t prepare enough. After 27 years, I miscalculated how much I needed to plan in order to effectively communicate my expectations, the assignment targets, and skills needed to be successful. That led to one of the worst class sessions I have taught in a while.

This is normal. It happens sometimes. It is the reality of education. So, when we read all of these education pieces talking about model lessons, just remember that the reality is that there are bad days. Sometimes, even the best planned lessons don’t go well. Sometimes, we professionals mess up. Sometimes, we under plan. Sometimes, we miscalculate the amount of scaffolding needed in order to get kids to learn a concept.

Truth be told, I am surprised that I went two months without a day like yesterday. It might be the longest streak of my career. I do know, however, that there will be more this year. We are human; we are dealing with a group of humans who are growing up. Perfection is unrealistic. Even with the best of intentions and planning, some lessons will fall flat. Some will fail.

Again, this is normal and it doesn’t mean you are a bad teacher for having one of those days. And they don’t happen because you forgot your “why”.

What matters is what you do next. After spending some time kicking myself for failing, I got to planning for the next day. I spoke to another teacher of the course and collaborated a bit. I did what I should have done in the first place; I put together a lesson that had the assignment expectations, the rubrics, and an example of the end products involved in this assignment. I even checked some AI programs to see if there were ideas I was missing. While I didn’t use any of the AI ideas, it was good preparation for me.

I was ready.

I came in today and opened up class with an apology.

“I sucked yesterday.”

The class looked at me and some smiled. I told them that yesterday was not a great day for me in the classroom and that I was sorry for not being more clear. I finished the apology by stating that I had a better plan today and that they would leave understanding it all.

20 minutes later, they were all producing exactly what I was looking for. The plan worked and yesterday’s bad day is now just a memory.

There are a few lessons here.

First, when reading education articles or sitting through a PD session from a motivational speaker, realize that they are leaving out the failures and the bad days that everyone in the profession has. There are certainly more of them at the beginning of the career than closer to the end, but even veterans have those days. You are not a failure for having them. You only fail if you don’t learn from them.

Second, teaching is never definitive. You could have the best plan in the world and still have a lesson fall flat because it didn’t connect with your students. My failure was a result of me not planning enough, but I have had failures when I had everything planned down to the last second of the period.

And, finally, it’s about what happens next. So, a lesson bombed? What’s the plan to undo it? When you come back the next day, admit that it didn’t go well because of you, and then present a better lesson, it shows kids a few things. It shows them that you didn’t blame them. It shows that you care enough to do it all again. It shows that the content they need to learn is important. And, perhaps most importantly, it shows that failure is a part of the learning process. Hopefully, that allows them to try things without the fear of failure and to ask questions when they don’t understand something.

I was going to say that yesterday I was a bad teacher, but that’s inaccurate. I had a bad day. To do the job right, you have to learn from those bad days and, in the words of Rocky Balboa, “just keep moving forward.” Sure, it is hard to accept a bad day as a professional, but they are very real and completely normal.