March 22, 2021

Chase Mielke: Let Me Teach Like A Normal Human Being

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At his blog Affective Living, Chase Mielke focuses on preventing teacher burnout and increasing student engagement. In a recent post, he looks at the huge demands put on teachers, from active shooters to pandemics. The post starts out tough:

“I’m not asking you to die for your students. I’m asking you to kill for your students.”

I expected our active shooter training to be heavy. But I didn’t expect to hear those words from our training officer. Nor did I expect to hear so much silence, punctuated with sniffling noses  — adults sucking back the emotions that leak when the audio of the Columbine shooting blasts across your auditorium. Gut dropping sadness of gunshots outside a librarian’s door. Empathetic fear when she tells students that it’s going to be okay, not knowing or not showing that kids were being killed outside the door. 

Mielke confronts an issue familiar to many teachers, particularly in 2021:

Society wants me to teach like a superhuman. But I can’t.

The complete post is available here–for every tired, stressed teacher out there, it’s worth a read.

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