Last December, David B. Cohen, an accomplished teacher-leader and blogger posted his five resolutions for teachers (and he re-tweeted that post recently, which got me started here this morning). This past year, I’ve had the chance to hear from some great thinkers and leaders, so that has me thinking about what we teachers ought to consider for our 2015 Resolutions. These are very “teacher-centric” as opposed to directly considering our students… but if we are our best as professionals and as a system, who benefits is clear.

Things for educators to consider in 2015:

1. Let’s change the way we talk about teaching. At the Spring NBCT Teacher Leadership Conference in Sun Mountain, Washington, our kickoff speaker, 2013 National Teacher of the Year and Zillah High School science teacher Jeff Charbonneau, got me thinking about this one. Too often, he pointed out, we teachers minimize the work that we do when we talk to other professionals. Too often, the conversation focuses on the “getting to play with kids all day” and “those three months [weeks] off for summer break,” or devolves into a gripe session about testing (see the next resolutions).

Any time we have the chance to talk about teaching with non-educators, we have the opportunity to shape perception, which has the potential to shape policy. Whether we’re talking to a pal from college, Aunt Suzie at the family reunion, or a legislator in Oly, we need to be cognizant about how we talk about our work: it is meaningful, but incredibly complex. It is rewarding, but cognitively challenging. It is not babysitting or trying to crush teenagers’ lives with big red F’s on their essays. Too often, teachers are perceived in the extremes: either we are passive babysitters or hyperbolic complainers demanding more X, Y, and Z. The truth is in the nuance, and if we talk nuance and not hyperbole, people will learn to listen.

2. For every complaint brought, also bring two solutions. I believe that we are often our own worst enemies when it comes to reforming and improving our systems. Whether it is how a grade-level team operates, what district-wide assessment programs will look like, or which items deserve priority in the Governor’s budget, teachers are great at pointing out the flaws, consequences, or negative collateral damage. It’s a human thing, really; we are a highly critical species.

The problem with always pointing out the flaws, particularly in situations such as district or state level policy where decisions are ultimately in the hands of others, is that pointing out the flaws does no good to inform the deciders about a better course of action. When we complain, we might feel like we have “power,” since we’re speaking up, after all. However, the deciding power still lies somewhere else. When we only complain about what we don’t want, that doesn’t help the deciders better understand what we do want or more importantly, how to give us what we want. Dislike Common Core? What exactly should we do instead? Not a fan of SBAC? What alternative do you suggest? Keep in mind, also, that “stop the testing madness,” “leave us alone,” or “trust us to be professionals” are not actual solutions. They are whines masquerading as solutions… and these don’t tell the deciders what to decide.

3. If you don’t like it, “hack” it. I’ve mentioned in previous posts that when new education initiatives come into view, we educators often lament that we’ve seen it all before: the pendulum is swinging again, “PLC” of the 2000s was “CFG” in the 1990s and “TQM” in the 1980s. Instead of just doing the same and waiting out the pendulum, we need to always open our mind to consider why it is that these same trends keep coming back. My observations are these: 1. The trends mean that there’s something we as a system are not doing well if the same solutions keep reappearing with different labels, and 2. We’re clearly not changing. We are great about saying “this too shall pass” and waiting out new initiatives. When we do this, yes, they do pass…but they also come back. And they will know where to find us, because we will not have moved.

When something “new” comes along, we need to always rifle through it for what we like before we start pointing out the things we dislike. The latter is easier (see resolution #2 about complaining). Too often, we don’t do the former at all, but instead begin by simply saying “no” and waiting it out (this too shall pass). One societal trend we might consider co-opting: the “hack.” Instead of simply saying “no” to a new initiative, why not consider how to “hack” it? That means to take it apart, find the pieces that work, add your own twists and tricks, and put it into practice. What might it look like to hack a PLC? The Common Core? Hacks are all about taking something and making it better… or as Urban Dictionary suggests, a hack is “a clever solution to a tricky problem” or, as a verb, “to modify or change something in an extraordinary way.” You might not be able to hack the SBAC itself (highly discouraged), but you can surely hack the way your school or district responds to that mandate.

Last and most important (IMO)…

4. Don’t wait for things to change before you decide you are happy. When I first read Mindset (or enough of it to get the gist, as I have a remarkably short attention span when it comes to reading) it dramatically impacted how I viewed success, achievement, teaching, grading, and parenting. Fixed and growth mindset have been the recent fad (and I always worry that when things become fads, their true value gets diminished). A new great idea that seems to have percolated up this year is by Harvard psychologist Shawn Achor, and it is based on his book The Happiness Advantage and a popular TED talk that has made the rounds among many educators this year.

The gist: there’s something else our country has backwards and that is how we define “happiness.” We too often think in this way: “Once we accomplish X, then we will be happy.” The “X” can be anything (that’s what variables are, right math teachers?). Achor’s thesis, which is based in scientific research: this doesn’t actually happen. If we wait to accomplish X before we are happy, the problem is that once we achieve X, we create Y…the new thing we need to accomplish in order to be happy. Conversely, Achor’s research has uncovered that people who intentionally choose to start from a place of happiness rather than treat happiness as the outcome of a conditional “if-then” statement are not only happier (duh) but are also measurably more effective at their work.

What does this mean? Well, if Common Core and TPEP and ABCD are making you miserable, and you think they are making you worse at your job, you are right…but not for the reason you want to think. If we choose to respond to everything in education by going negative, that impacts our job performance, which impacts our job satisfaction, and it is a downward spiral; but it is a spiral that is actually within our control. Every one of us has the choice to start each day happy, though, no matter what acronyms are foisted upon us. If we wait for CCSS or TPEP to go away, or be “done,” before we’re happy again, it’s not going happen…something new will no doubt come along. Why wait for happiness? Achor’s message: choose it now and be better at what you do.

Congratulations for making it to the end of this post, and for making it through another 365 days. If you’re like me, and it feels like the years are accelerating as you get older, realize that in a sense this is actually correct. A math teacher colleague of mine pointed out that 2015 will, in fact, be a smaller proportion of my life than 2014 was: On December 31, 2014, the previous year will have constituted approximately 2.75% of my life thus far. On December 31, 2015, the previous year will have been approximately 2.68% of my life by that point. There is the mathematical proof that time does go by faster the older you get…