In My 2024 Era: Why I Started My Journey of Personal Growth.

rootedcurriculum
Jan 3, 2024
7 min read

Hi friends..it's been a little bit since I last wrote a blog post. And while I would have blamed it all on having another one of my ADHD hyperfixations fizzle out, I promised myself that I was going to start being nicer to my mind. The reality is that I am loving this little diary of sorts but I wanted a break from feeling like I HAD to show up for my blog. This is for fun and not work so if I kept telling myself that I HAD to write these posts then I was setting myself up for another path to burnout. The last post I wrote was right before a family vacation which transitioned into Thanksgiving, then into school Christmas play season for my kids, then the gazillion Christmas dinners over the course of December. Any-who...I'm back and refreshed!

Over the last 2 years, I've been on a personal growth journey but it wasn't until I felt like I had hit rock bottom. I'm not an addict of drugs or alcohol. I'm not facing bankruptcy. I'm not going through a divorce. I'm not lost from my beliefs. But for me, rock bottom happened when I was so damn angry over everything. I was struggling to find even a sliver of joy when I walked into my classroom for the day. Something that used to set my soul on fire was now causing me so much pain. I used to have no problem staying hours after school, on weekends, over my "breaks" with my students working on our school's land lab/farm, practicing for contests, prepping for class, or attending a community meeting for any of the agriculture boards I served on. I had a supportive husband that would tag along at times and once we had our daughter, I would just take her with me to some of these events. Sure, there were times I felt burnt out during this hustling stage but overall I thought I was balancing it pretty well.

For 7 years, I lived like this as an agriculture teacher (3 of those years was after becoming a mom). But then I had my son, my last little baby to complete our small family of 4. In my previous post, I talked a little bit about my struggle with returning from maternity leave. But honestly, it was so much more than that. We had a new administration team in my school and I guess they had a different approach to how to handle student behavior than I was used to seeing. I'm not saying that I'm one of the supporters of sending a disruptive kid to the office for a nice conversation about their choices then back to class with a bag of chips and a soda. However, the way this team decided to tackle the problems seemed to be by making an example out of the teachers in front of a room full of students.

I had learned about one of my colleagues getting reprimanded for a student not taking their hall pass to go to the bathroom. The teacher was yelled at in front of their class of middle school students for allowing the child to leave their room without the hall pass (the kid had left it on their desk so clearly the teacher gave it to the child but kids are kids and they probably just forgot to grab it).

I sympathized with this co-worker, talked a little trash about how ridiculous our admin had treated them then went about my week. Fast forward a month...now I was on the receiving end of our admin's new way of handling student behavior. The student asks to go to the bathroom... I tell them "sure, take your hall pass"...student walks out the door (right past the signs on my door that say "STOP! DO YOU HAVE YOUR HALL PASS?)...I keep teaching....a couple of minutes pass...my door is unlocked and an angry administrator has escorted the child back from the bathroom...."MRS. ROBERTS...YOUR STUDENTS ARE TO HAVE THEIR HALL PASS ANY TIME THEY LEAVE YOUR ROOM. DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?"

That was it. That was the moment that the last little ember of my teaching fire was blown out. There was no reigniting my flame like I had done so many times before.

I didn't respond to the administrator because I was caught completely off guard. After they shut my door back, a student taunted with the "ooooo, Mrs. Roberts got in troubbbllleeeeee". Yep, I was done. That's when I realized just how different my school had become. So I made it my goal to leave teaching that year.

You may be thinking, "well why didn't you just look for a new school?" Yes, that is the answer for some people and that is normally my advice when a newer teacher starts to wonder if they should leave teaching because they are facing burnout for the first time. However, for me, I had turned down offers every school year to come back to my town's high school to teach but after getting to build my middle school program from the ground up I knew that if I left my program...the one I poured my blood, sweat, and tears into, it was because I was leaving public education. I had known that for years. I also knew that the administrator turnover rate is relatively high in my area so I could have "waited them out".

However, times weren't always this bad with some of my administrative team. When my FFA chapter got the news that we were a finalist for the National FFA Middle School Model of Excellence Award, I was on my way to an SBDM meeting with my principal and I began screaming and crying with excitement. When I blubbered out the words, they hugged me and jumped up and down with me and showered me with praise. I felt supported, seen, and appreciated.

At the time, I didn't realize why this kind of stuff mattered to me. I didn't understand why when something good happened to me, I enjoyed it for a moment then once the dopamine quickly wore off, I felt the aftermath effects so negatively. I didn't understand why hearing that my co-workers were being treated poorly bothered me more than when I was on the receiving end. I didn't understand why I wasn't able to stand up for myself but would challenge every single negative situation that would impact my students, my program, my co-workers, or even people that I didn't even know.

I was given a label of being "too direct" when I spoke to people. But just two years prior, my principal tried to give me a compliment by saying "I appreciate that you're always smiling and so bubbly". It didn't happen overnight, but I became way too assertive (like in an unhealthy way), too direct in conversations, and down right un-enjoyable to work with. I was the problem. But who likes to admit that?

When I was participating in a professional development group called Kentucky Master Agriculture Teachers, we were assigned to take an Enneagram test as part of our first assignment. If you are unfamiliar with Enneagrams, it is basically a personality test similar to the DISC test or Myers Briggs Type Indicator. Once we took our test, we had to read about our type in this book they sent us called "The Road Back to You" by Ian Morgan Cron and Suzanne Stabile. And lemme just tell you...I cried like a freaking baby.

I had never felt more seen or heard before in my life..I felt like I was being exposed so hard-core that I was getting uncomfortable. That's when things really started to come into perspective for me. Why I was the way that I am....good and bad. To tell you the truth, I have really struggled with accepting that I am an 8 on the Enneagram test. 8's are called "The Challengers" and honestly I don't like to identify as someone that rocks the boat. I want to be seen as someone that is easy going. Heck, I almost didn't accept this new found knowledge about myself until my husband (who also does Enneagram tests for his work) agreed with my results.

With this self discovery, I realized that I was in a terrible space mentally and that is why I was acting so brash at work. Like I said earlier, I had hit my rock bottom. I began to realize that for me I needed to remove myself from the triggers that caused the root of my negative emotions and that was located at my school district. If you've read my first series of blog posts, my transition out of the classroom was not easy. I really struggled with the grieving process of losing my old identity of being a teacher, but I also realized that I am predisposed to think and act a certain way when I am in an unhealthy mindset. I had changed my working environment but I quickly realized that I was resorting to some of my old habits of being "too direct".

While I had started on a journey of growth, I was so focused on understanding who I was that I didn't think about how my colleagues also had their own Enneagram number and that if I wanted to grow as a person on a holistic level then I needed to not only start understanding my traits when I was in a healthy mindset vs an unhealthy one but I needed to start understanding how to work with other personality types.

While serving as a training manager, I led a leadership workshop with one of my farm teams. We started this half day workshop taking our Enneagram tests, then shared our results with the small group. We would take turns letting our co-workers know our type and wing number with a short summary about our type, and one takeaway we wished our co-workers knew about us so we weren't misunderstood. For example, my type is an Enneagram 8 with a 9 wing which translates to me being known as a "challenger". 8's are motivated to be independent, self-reliant, and strong willed. However, I wished that my co-workers understood that I am assertive when I feel like under-served individuals are being taken advantage of...kind of like taking up for the underdog in a fight...I don't mean any harm by being assertive, I just don't like seeing people being taken advantage of.

This exercise helped our group so much that it was their biggest takeaway from the leadership workshop and I still get former co-workers talking about their Enneagram types or say things like "well he is a 3 so what do you expect from him" when we meet for our weekly lunch.

So, since this is a new year and we are all trying to set some goals for 2024, I want to challenge you to take your Enneagram test and get started learning who you truly are. No matter what your resolution is this year, you can apply this new knowledge to it. We are going to be in our 2024 Era this year so let's make it count by starting it off with a journey of self discovery.