Changing schools can be incredibly stressful. Each workplace has its own unique culture, both hidden and explicit. Additionally there is a whole new set of colleagues to understand, and who need time to understand you. In a collaborative work environment, like a school, I have found that it is essential to start on positive assumptions of belief in new colleagues and in myself. Most people want to be helpful, they mean to be clear. I will emerge from the fog of confusion. I will ...and here is the rub....feel competent as a teacher again.

This July, I started work at a new school. It is my fourth school in my 20 year career. I remember distinctly the cognitive and professional dislocation I felt during my last school transition. It seriously threatened to derail me, undermining my confidence and my identity as a teacher. Thankfully, so far I have been handling this transition with more grace. 

When you have been in a school for a long time, there is a known track record, a level of trust, familiar resources, known professional expertise and working relationships that you are comfortable with. In changing schools, all these are left behind. While I carrying with me a large pool of professional capital, in my current setting it is only privately held. In contrast, the collective professional capital of my new school does not yet belong to me. I know that it will only be a matter of time and experience, that eventually I too will be able to claim and be fully cognizant in the collective professional capital of this new workplace. For now though I live and work with a level of ambiguity that is uncomfortable and stressful. I am trying to rejoice in this: to claim it as my own professional Goldilocks Zone, or ZPD if you prefer, of professional learning. I do not believe in professional stagnancy. So while I am struggling, I also know I am learning.  

How has change impacted my life of late? It has not merely been a shift to a new school. Can I promote growth through practicing positive assumptions across all areas of my life? I have written before about developing growth mindsets and positive habits of mind in our students. Now my challenge is to develop these is myself amidst these changes:

• Changed country from China to New Zealand
• Change educational systems from an IB International School to the New Zealand public school system
• Switching from Year 5 to Year 0
• Living with family just down the road for the first time in 18 years
• Started attending a new church community
• Living in my own house instead of rented accommodation for the first time
• Living on considerably less than my previous salary
• Owning and driving a car for first time in 18 years
• About to vote for the first time in 18 years - This one is really confusing me. Understanding a countries political climate is tricky!!!

What does it mean to be a good teacher? What defines and separates out the good from the excellent? I keep returning to this question of excellence in my own professional life. I am in my final semester of a very profitable 9 years at my current school. Huge life changes loom ahead as I will be relocating back to my "home" of New Zealand after almost 18 years of absence. Questions of finding a teaching position, of entering what will be for me an new education system and the transferability of my professional skills, dominate my thoughts. 

Yet in the midst of all this, I have a wonderful class of very present students. Daily, I need to seek and find myself as a professional in this present moment. Thoughts of the future will not benefit my current students. They need me today, to hear their queries and respond to their excitement about learning. Dylan Williams in a recent conference at our school summed up a very popular sentiment by saying repeatedly to us that: "teaching is an impossible job." There is always more to be done than can be achieved within the constraints of time, curriculum and access to resources. And yet, beyond all of these, I have always believed that the most powerful of all forces for learning is relationship. Today, tomorrow, each period of class, I commit to being present for my students with all my mind and heart. They deserve nothing less. I am inspired by the students before me, their trust in me to make each day count.

I have been thinking a lot lately about the difference between factual actual truth and perceptions. Particularly about students actual safety and their felt safety. I have always invested my attention into ensuring my student are safe and then last week when I asked the students to complete a teacher evaluation one lad had the courage to write, "Miss Renee is scary." Fortunately, this was only the perception of that one little man, but to him his perception is all that matters.  

Students need to feel safe, so they can fully engage in cognitive learning tasks. Research shows that the best learning occurs when students feel safe. Student perception then becomes all important, more so than the mere facts of physical safety. If they are stressed, anxious and in a fear state, then the thinking part of their brain does not function well. In effect the thinking skills of the cortex are hijacked by the lower, emotional part of the brain.  When there is not a felt sense of safety, processing verbal information, sustaining attention and focus, and memory recall are impeded (Steele, 2007). 

This week, I came face to face with this issue again as a little chap experienced severe separation anxiety. As I held him through his sustained rage, I thought again about the power of fear in a child's life. He was safe with me, but he did not know that. Even my gentle low statements of, "It will be OK. You are safe" did not, could not, register with him while he was in that state. Eventually, the rage subsided and he cried himself into a calmer state. The challenge for me then was to orchestrate the day, our every interaction, to communicate a sense of safety. Now I am conscious that as the weekend passes, Monday approaches. Is it with dread or with expectant anticipation in the mind of this little boy? We all want to see our students skip happily into class, but what strategies have you found most successful for the fearful, the anxious child? 

Steele, W. (2007) Trauma’s Impact on Learning and Behavior: A Case for Interventions in Schools. Retrieved April 14, 2012 from http://www.tlcinst.org/impact.html