The Sustainable Teacher's Cheatsheet

These concrete actions will upgrade your lessons and your life

I’ m not a teacher, but an awakener

Robert Frost

Teachers today have a new kind of responsibility.

For the first time in human history survival isn’t about the things we built and did. Survival is about the things we stopped doing.

GenZ is the last generation able to do something about climate change. You have a few short years to prepare them.

2019 is our 1939.

We have a decade to transition from consumers to custodians. To teach our children to do the same.

Your example, today and tomorrow, is critical.

The ten steps below are the first on the path to your sustainable future.

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

1. Let Go of Late Nights.

“Even a soul submerged in sleep is hard at work and helps make something of the world.”

Heraclitus, Fragments

There is no morning ‘A-game’ without lots of ZZZ ‘s the night before. A good night’s sleep. Every night. This is the simple, solid foundation of the sustainable lesson.

You could stay up half-marking, while dozing off in front of the TV.

You could check facebook in bed.

You could go over tomorrow’s lesson plan one more time.

You could worry about that one student who seems distracted recently.

You could pick up your phone again.

On the other hand, you could sleep.

Half of your class will say they are “tired” in the classroom tomorrow. The other half will be yawning. You are the awakener.

Everything starts with sleep. The currency of the classroom is energy: Go to bed early. You’ll wake up rich.

2. Let go of the morning rush

“You Are Not ‘Stuck In Traffic’, You Are Traffic”

Anon

The sustainable lesson begins with that most mundane of routines- The commute. This sets the tone. Cattle trucks. Pollution. An hour of stress to start your day.

Refuse to travel in rush hour. Do whatever you can to let this madness go.

If you can, walk or cycle. Leave for school an hour early on a deserted train.

Anything to get exercise and avoid crowded public transport, and traffic wherever possible.

This healthy and productive daily habit will change your world. It increases resilience. It sets you up for success.

It mimics the habits of the best education system in the world.

It sets the example to students. It will give your body and mind the space it needs to prepare the next generation for a healthier, low carbon future.

3. Let go of media

“It should be telling… that the two biggest tech figures in recent history — Bill Gates and Steve Jobs — seldom let their kids play with the very products they helped create.”

Business Insider

The same for web traffic as road traffic. The best teachers avoid it until their day is assured and set up for success. Let go of the barrage of negative news and distracting social media as your day starts.

The next twitter storm, the latest scandal, those ads. They’re stealing your mind and time. Don’t empty a trash can of useless information on to your head each morning. Project your dreams out to the world instead.

If something really important happened someone will tell you about it in the course of your day. Otherwise it’s just distorting noise.

This daily upgrade will flow to the rest of your life, and your lessons, then to your students. All the information you have to start the day right, is in your plan.

Do the things your future self will thank you for. Daily. Weekly. Monthly. Watch the benefits compound as they grow.

4. Let go of Late Starts.

Wake up early everyday so that while others are still dreaming, you can make your dreams come true.

Hal Elrod

The best way to avoid the maddening crowd is to be at your desk when others are walking through the gate. The most successful teachers understand and internalise the importance of preparedness.

Preparedness begins with readiness. Readiness begins with an hour of peaceful thought gathering before the start of a successful lesson.

In this hour of calm before the storm you can (in order of preference).

• Meditate
• Journal
• Read books
• Plan lessons
• Go over the schedule for the day
• Tick off admin

When you give yourself this space for contemplation and preparation you relax. This relaxation clears the mind of debris and allows you to focus.

Your students will sense this relaxation. They will feed off it. It will help them to be calm. You even greet the latecomers with a serene smile.

A morning routine allows you to remember who you really are and what really matters. A life of meaning and purpose is made up of days that start with the same.

Your work is important. Clear a space for it. From there, you build.

5. Let go of unstructured living.

Decide what you stand for. And then stand for it all the time.

Clayton Cristiansen.

Values

Long Term Vision

Goals

Life’s work

Career

Year

Term

Week

Lesson

This is a strict hierarchy and a foundation for a year that changes your life:

The vision is a product of the values >

The career plan is subordinate to the life plan >

The academic year plan is subordinate to the career >

and so on.

Each aspect, each day, part of a wider whole. The values define your habits which will fuel your powerful purposeful lessons.

As you get better at this you will replace negative habits with positive ones and will go on to achieve your goals through habit and iteration.

How we live our days is of course how we live our lives.

- Annie Dillard

Be intentional with your plan. You owe it to yourself and your students.

It has to be this way for a life of fulfilment.

You know this.

Your goals are too important to let them fade. The demands on your time as a teacher are too great.

To leave your future to fate is a risk not worth taking. The stakes are too high.

If facebook, junk food and late night television are part of that plan, if they help you get to where you want to go, that is fine.

If not, cut them out.

Without your plan, students, colleagues, media will consciously or unconsciously make you part of their plans.

Your time will evaporate. You will grow old passively. Lessons will slip through your fingers. Personally and professionally you will have regrets.

But structure your life and your lessons will follow suit. In 20 years time you see one of your students on television. They thank you in an acceptance speech.

6. Let Perfection Go

Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.

― Immanuel Kant

The path to teaching excellence is paved with imperfection and failure.

Some mornings you will sleep in, get caught in traffic, eat McDonalds for breakfast. All day you will feel on the back foot and your lessons will be a reactive nightmare.

Think of those days as reminders on why you have changed.

That picture of the perfect class, the perfect lesson, the perfect teacher, you have in your head.

Let it go.

You will never get there. Those perfect students. They do not exist. They are not real.

But there is a beautifully imperfect rainy Tuesday for you to enjoy with your beautifully imperfect class. A profound lesson for them in each mistake you make together, and your reaction to it.

Stop beating yourself up. Calm the voice in your head telling you you are not good enough. You are good enough.

You have to be. For them. For yourself.

Be kinder to yourself. Let the ‘we should’s’ turn to ‘we could’s’ your students will sense your effort and presence.

Your kids might forget to say thank you now.

But once they have built a sustainable world based on the habits you showed them they will be eternally grateful.

7. Let go of the 80% that is stealing your time. Focus on the 20% that is changing your world.

“Doing less is not being lazy. Don’t give in to a culture that values personal sacrifice over personal productivity.”

― Tim Ferriss

Schools are often places when being too busy is worn like a badge of honour. Departments are siloed and replicate work.

The vast majority the meetings I attended had at least one attendee arrive late or not at all. Teachers are overworked and stressed. They are doing too much.

For most work, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. This is the Pareto principle. Use it to your advantage. Identify that 20% and focus relentlessly.

Use your plan to edit out the extracurricular commitments or projects that are not in line with your vision. Being ‘busy’ is a result of vague priorities.

Trim the fat. Be kind but firm in saying “No” For the sake of your mind, and your students.

When you clear out the clutter from your classroom at the end of term you feel better about things. You have more space. You better appreciate the resources you have, the space you have to teach.

This is that exercise. But for your life and mind.

8. Let go of the classroom comfort zone

Even 25 minutes outside has been shown to relax the brain and increase cognitive function

Rob Hopkins

The best teachers are guides. And guides go on adventures.

Space. In your morning, your mind. In everything you do.

Plan a regular day outside with your class for reflection. Anywhere that is not the classroom.

A local park, sports fields, even the street. Pairing the introduction of new ideas with the light exercise of walking and exploring will help your students assimilate novel environments and new ideas.

It will help them to imagine different kind of humanity in a sustainable world.

Your relationships will flourish. You will breathe and reconnect on a human level. You will have conversations as humans beings. Slowly will start to ask “What if…?” rather than you telling them what is.

9. Let go of the popularity contest. With staff and students.

Do Not Live to Satisfy the Expectations of Others

Ichiro Kishimi

If you are clear on your values and plans, you are marching to your own drum beat. At times this will lead to conflict as people realise you are more focussed. You are changing.

They will try to co-opt you in some way to revert to your old reactive self.

A student will tease. A colleague will cajole.

Smile. Breathe. Reflect. Stick to your path. They might not like you for it. But they will respect you.

What you are doing. Your values, your future, your goals, matter.

The sense of embarrassment in the moment of asserting yourself is soon replaced with pride that you chose and followed your own path. .

10. Let go of the What and When. Replace it with the How’s and Whys.

Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.

Magaret Mead

This is the toughest thing to let go — But the rewards are greatest.

Teaching today is in a great part stress management .

The most successful teachers establish rapport. And that makes the difference in the long run.

The teachers who gave their students hope asked deeper questions of their students and themselves.

While relentless focus on results is the ‘What’ of past papers and the ‘When’ of exam dates the most courageous teachers look at How and Why.

The key to the generation that turned it round is you. The best teacher they ever had is you.

You use open ended questions and class discussion. You show off an open mind. You ask students why we are here. You listen.

Students are a lens to the future. You ask them not only how the world is, and why we are here, but how it might one day be, and why.

They recognise our common humanity. Because of you.

The science is clear.

The statistics are plain.

We have slept walked in to a climate crisis and stumbled in to a youth mental health crisis.

They need you.

Once we have let go of our past we will be able to embrace a sustainable future.

Get to it. Pick them up. Dust them off. Tool up. You’re not a teacher. You’re an awakener.

Experience Something Different runs educational field trips to a sustainable future. We talk to lots of school and universities, corporates and start ups about climate curriculum and careers.

We share what we have learned in articles like this and reports like this. To see the sustainable future of teaching go here.