How to Love Teaching Again: A Conversation with Jamie Sears

Sara
Hey there, listeners. Today on the podcast, I have a very special return guest, Jamie Sears, who is the founder of the wildly popular education website and brand, The Not So Wimpy Teacher.

Sara
Now Jamie has actually been on my podcast before she was a guest way back on episode number 24, which feels like ages ago, where she talked all about how to get your reluctant writers excited about writing. And it was such a great episode. And I am super excited to bring Jamie back on the podcast.

Sara
But today she isn’t talking about writing. Jamie is celebrating the release of her brand new book, How to Love Teaching Again. And Jamie actually had the vision and idea for writing this book, way back in 2019. And once the pandemic hit and dramatically changed and shifted the culture of education, she knew that she really had to get this book into the hands of teachers.

Sara
Now hearing the title of this book, I kind of had the idea that you know, it would be a teacher self help book on how to beat burnout. But after our conversation, I feel like this book is so much more than that. And what Jamie is really sharing in what she’s created is a guide and a manual for how to thrive in the world of education.

Sara
So even if you aren’t interested in adding any more books to your teacher bookshelf at this time, I know that just listening to this episode, you’re going to get so much out of it and you’re going to feel encouraged. I can’t wait for you to hear what Jamie has to say about how to love teaching again. So let’s jump on into the conversation.

Sara
Hi, Jamie, welcome back to the podcast. I am so excited to have you on today.

Jamie
Thanks, Sara. I’m really excited to get to chat with you. It’s been a while.

Sara
Absolutely yeah, you’re on over a year ago, I think to talk all about writing, which was such a fantastic episode that still is one of my listeners favorite episodes. And so we’ll definitely link to that as well.

Sara
But we’re not going to talk about writing today. You have had such a big year, I feel like in the Not So Wimpy Teacher world do you kind of want to share with my audience a few of the big things that have been happening behind the scenes?

Jamie
Yeah, so well, really behind the scenes, we welcomed our sixth baby in December. And that was a really long, challenging journey, we’re super excited to be on the other side enjoying our rainbow baby.

Jamie
But also in the midst of all that I have written a book and published a book and kind of made this whole bucket list dream of mine come true. And so that’s been what I have been focusing on literally for two and a half years behind the scenes a long, long project.

Sara
Which first of all, congratulations, I have never written a book. But I’ve had a few friends that have gone through the process. And I have heard that it is like it’s a labor of love. I mean, it just the process that it goes through. And I feel like the last time that I saw you in like December of 2021, maybe you were like just starting the process of writing the book.

Sara
And so I know that this is something that you have been working on for such a long time. So I’m sure it has to be so exciting for you that it’s like it’s done. It’s ready to be in the hands of teachers and like starting to make an impact.

Jamie
Yeah, I actually came up with the idea of the book in 2019. And then it took a while to figure out how to write a book because I didn’t know I mean, other than just like opening up your computer and writing I didn’t know what else to do. So it took a while to figure that portion out.

Jamie
And so then it took another two and a half years after we formally started working on it. So getting it in the hands of teachers feels like such a massive undertaking. And we’re just we’re celebrating now because I really have this dream of getting it as many teachers hands as possible, and we need to watch that happen.

Sara
That’s awesome. So your book is titled How to Love Teaching Again. Can you share a little bit about like, why you chose this topic out of all the topics in education that you could have written about? Why this topic and why now? Like why is this book need to be published right now?

Jamie
Yeah, so I came up with the book title and topic way back in 2019. And it was just on my heart. I always wanted to write a book since I was in grade school. I was the nerdy kid who sat on the wall during recess and wrote stories. I actually got a thesaurus from the library. And I would like change every single word in my story with a cooler word. So you can imagine what that sounded like.

Jamie
So I always wanted to read a book. But back then I thought I was gonna read a fiction book, I didn’t really know what it would be like to be an author, what that meant. And in 2019, I just, I had this heart calling, I had all of these teachers in my community, who were always asking for help, they were sharing these heartbreaking stories or having to leave the classroom earlier than they wanted to feeling like they had to choose between family and their job, or their own health and their job.

Jamie
And I just felt like, there were certain strategies, and systems I put in place in the classroom that helped me and I thought the least I could do is share what really worked for me. And I started to do that with my community. But I wanted to get it out into the hands of even more teachers make it really accessible.

Jamie
I couldn’t have anticipated how education would have changed with a pandemic, but we were in the midst of the project. And I was like, we have to push the gas on this because teachers were struggling in 2019. But by 2021, it had been exasperated, so 600,000 less teachers in 2022, than in 2020. That’s how many teachers were just leaving the classroom.

Jamie
Some of them were retiring, but some of them left long before they truly wanted to leave, because they felt like they needed to leave in order to like take back their life. And so I knew that, that calling back in 2019, I just had to listen to it. And so we worked really hard with our community of teachers talk about what they most needed, and what they’re most worried about, and brought it to life in this book that I think it couldn’t have come any later. Like we needed this in the hands now.

Sara
Yeah, it’s like, how cool is it that you had this idea back in 2019? But then also, I feel like it’s just obviously, the timing of it. Because like you said, it’s like the pandemic and teaching since then I feel like the pain and the challenge and the struggles that teacher face has just been exacerbated in the last couple of years.

Sara
And it does, it makes me so sad when I hear a teacher who’s like I am burnt out, I’m at the end of my rope. Like I’ve loved teaching, but I don’t love teaching in today’s current climate. And I’m going to leave Oh, you know, I have it’s been a couple years since I have been in the classroom. But when I was in the classroom, like I loved it, I had the joy from teaching and just, you know, working with kids, and that passion and excitement.

Sara
And I feel like, you know, teachers become teachers because they want to experience that joy. And I think so many teachers for a variety of reasons, don’t get that same joy and that same experience that they wanted to, you know, when they first started. And so I’m excited that this book is hopefully going to help some teachers reconnect with that joy of teaching again.

Jamie
Absolutely. I feel like in my community, I noticed this huge difference where there was always a stress associated with teaching, but then the pandemic happened. And now it’s gotten more into anger. Yeah. And I’m hearing too many stories of people who dreamed of being a teacher their whole life.

Jamie
But now they’re leaving to go wait tables to to do bartending. There’s someone who left to bartender, she says she was three nights a weeks now and makes more money than teaching. But I mean, her heart isn’t in our attending her heart was in teaching, but you got to make the ends meet and put a roof over your head.

Jamie
And unfortunately, teachers are having to make decisions between the career that they wanted to do because of their heart and a career that’s going to pay the bills and not cause them as much stress, anxiety, fear, even teachers are experiencing a lot of fear.

Sara
So I know the title of your book is How to Love Teaching Again. But I feel like that’s kind of like a big, it’s like a big umbrella. So can you kind of give us like a little bit of like a sneak peek almost like what are teachers going to learn and experience in this book? Kind of walk us through what are the big topics that you cover? Because I’m assuming there’s a lot that goes into, like, how to love teaching?

Jamie
Yeah, I had so much I love at the beginning of writing a book, it’s like, I’m never gonna have enough to write a book. And then the editors are like, you’re gonna have to cut out half of this because there’s not enough room in a book. And I think that some people have read the book and said, This is what I wish I’d learned in college, because we’re not talking to teachers about how to take care of themselves in the classroom.

Jamie
So I think the big overarching theme in the book is beating burnout. It’s implementing strategies and systems into your life into your classroom that will help you to get your work done quicker at a high quality and go home so that you can have time with the people the hobbies, the things that you love most.

Jamie
Most people are not happy in a job that becomes their entire life. Most people need to have that go home experience where they don’t have to stress about work. And so I was thinking, as I wrote the book, what is something that I can teach them how to do that would save them time in the classroom? So that’s a big part of the book.

Jamie
There’s also a fantastic chapter in the book where I’m really trying to help them eliminate some of the chaos in the classroom because a lot of the teachers in my community said, you know, I’ve just feel overstimulated, when I get home, it takes a long to, to decompress. And so I thought about the things that I did in my classroom to help me because I get overstimulated very easily.

Jamie
And so there’s a great chapter in there that I tried to stuff, I tried to stuff so much in there, the others are like, whoa, whoa, whoa, but I just wanted to share with them the things that worked for me to make my day just a little less stressful, but still get to have those connections with students, still teach this standards at a high level that teachers aren’t going to start doing halfway jobs, that’s just not who they are. And so, really, the book is about how to get those really high priority items done faster.

Sara
I love that. And I think that is the heart of why teachers, you know, I don’t wanna say they don’t love teaching. But for teachers who are considering leaving, it’s because they are sort of stuck in this cycle of burnout, where they’ve got too many things on their to do list. They’re too overwhelmed by managing the day to day tasks in the classroom, as well as the demands of their principal and their district and testing and parents.

Sara
And then of course, like, life at home is stressful as well. And so it’s like, so on top of that, like managing all of that. And so I love that this book is really like focused on the systems and helping teachers like beat that cycle of burnout.

Sara
I know that you’re not currently in the classroom, and you’ve been running your business full time. And I know that you said that, like, obviously, you’ve used some of the things that have worked for you. But I’m just curious if you can kind of even share a little bit about like, how did you go about writing this book, and even just like some of the research that you’ve done, to make sure that what you’re sharing with teachers in this book is still relevant in today’s climate of education?

Jamie
Yeah, I love that question. It’s a great one. So yes, I only share things that I have done. And that worked for me. When I first started teaching, I quickly got close to burnout. In my very first year, I nearly quit. And there was a point even where the principal said, if you need to quit, I’m gonna let you out of your contract. Because she was very concerned about me.

Jamie
I had four kids, and I just didn’t feel like I was being a good teacher, or being a good mom. And so I nearly quit. And I kind of had this moment of clarity, when I realized that it wasn’t leaning in to the things I am good at. I started teaching and instantly assumed, oh, I’m brand new, I don’t know anything.

Jamie
But the reality is that as teachers, we all come to the profession, with certain things that we are already good at, from either previous jobs or from schooling and from our family are just things we were born to do. And one of the things I’m good at is simplifying things.

Jamie
And when I got thinking about that, as a first year teacher, I’m like, I’m not simplifying things in my classroom, I’ve literally been making things more challenging. Every week, I would go to Pinterest to look for all new activities for each week. I mean, that’s making things complicated, not simple.

Jamie
And so when I started to think about how can I make things simple, I made big changes that allowed me to go home at my contracted time. I didn’t have a good day, every day. I wasn’t without stress at all. But I really did avoid burnout and fall in love with teaching. And so I’m only sharing those strategies that I know worked for me.

Jamie
And then I took these strategies and I started teaching them in my community via my blog, my Facebook group, my YouTube channel. And as they were working for other teachers, I kind of had this moment of clarity that not everybody knows how to do this. Sometimes when you’re good at something, you actually assume everybody can do it, it’s really common actually, to assume that you’re like, that’s so simple. Nobody would think that’s helpful.

Jamie
And then you share it with someone they’re like, that’s genius. And I had a few moments like that. And I was like, oh, I should probably share this more, because I feel like when I left the classroom, I wasn’t ready to leave the classroom exactly. I was really at my peak, I finally had fantastic systems, I was going home at a great time. And I love what I was doing.

Jamie
But my health wasn’t good. I am epileptic. And I had lots of seizures in the classroom. And I felt like it was really hard on the students more so than me, it was it’s hard to have a seizure in front of kids, that kind of stress that you put on them. And I just really didn’t feel like it was fair anymore. And I had to have a really good chat with my husband because I didn’t want to leave but I also didn’t want to put them through this trauma honestly.

Jamie
So when I left and made a promise to myself, but also to my audience is that I’m not leaving education, I’m going to use this extra time I have at home now to make a big difference for you to make an impact to change the world of teaching to make things easier for you and so that’s what I’ve been really dedicated to for the last several years, and I grew a huge Facebook group community.

Jamie
And as I was writing the book, I went to them constantly. I did polls, what do you need to know? What’s, what’s hard? What’s not working? How are you currently lesson planning? How much are you currently grading? What can I do to help?

Jamie
And I use their stories, I use their pleas for help as really the outline for my book so that it would be very relevant. And it would also be exactly what they wanted and needed, not just what I wanted to write about.

Sara
I love that I love that you’re creating something that is based off of like teachers current needs, and getting their feedback and writing in the process. And I love that you left the classroom when you did, because I know the impact that you’ve been having on teachers through your teacher business. And especially with the release of this book, I mean, if you were still in the classroom, like this would not actually come to be.

Sara
So that was such a good decision for the world of education as hard as it might have been for you. But I want to go back to you know, when you said you created these systems, and you figured out a way to simplify things. Not every day was the best day, but overall, you figured out a way to make it enjoyable and love teaching again.

Sara
And I think that’s such an important reminder for teachers, because I feel like the conversation of burnout is been elevated. And I’ve you know, I’ve had multiple guests on my podcast talk about burnout, I see it on teacher Instagram, you know, it’s kind of like all over. And I think there’s almost this like misconception that when a teacher beats burnout, that they’ll be happy all of the time, right?

Sara
It’s like, okay, I’m burnt out. And the opposite of burnout is to be like, happy all the time, every day is going to be great. But the reality of it is is like even when you are putting systems in place, and even when you’ve like figured things out, not every day is going to be a good day. And so I think making sure teachers have that permission that like even when things get better, you’re still gonna have the occasional bad day. And that’s completely normal. And okay.

Jamie
Absolutely, I think it’s important to give yourself permission to feel the things you’re feeling because they’re real. But also maybe putting a time limit on I’m choosing to feel frustrated tonight, but starting tomorrow, I’m going to walk in fresh. That helps me I still have really stressful days just in business at home as a mother of six.

Jamie
And I’ve just learned the power of giving myself permission to feel crummy sometimes, because life isn’t easy, but also putting a time limit on it. Like I’m gonna sit here and eat ice cream and feel sorry for myself for the next hour. And that’s okay,

Sara
I love that I love the time limit, like I’m gonna feel bad about this, but tomorrow, like tomorrow is a fresh day. But that’s so great.

Sara
Okay, so I would love to talk kind of some practical because I know you said that you figured out ways to like simplify things and just like make things easy. And so I would love it if you could share some, you know, very specific tips for my audience. As you know, my audience is mostly upper elementary literacy teachers. And we love talking about ways to streamline and simplify, you know, teaching.

Sara
And one of the things that I know upper elementary teachers love to put into place in their classroom is literacy centers. But I also know from firsthand experience, and just from hearing from them, literacy centers is like really overwhelming. And I think that’s like one of those things that teachers are like, you know, they try it, they are constantly redoing their model and their system, because it’s a lot of materials to manage, it’s a lot of groups to manage, it’s a lot of, it’s just a lot to manage.

Sara
So I would love to know if you have any specific tips as far as how can teachers streamline literacy centers and simplify literacy centers in their classroom?

Jamie
I love this. I actually talk a lot about centers in chapter four, which is literally it’s that chapter I told you where I tried to stick everything in and the editors were like, Okay, well slow down girl, because there are so many things in the classroom that get really chaotic and stress you out. And I would say centers are one of them. Even though centers for me, that’s my favorite time of the day.

Jamie
But if you’re not careful, it’s just so much work, to prep, to plan to manage, to grade, to organize just the whole thing. And so yeah, I shared some tips in the book. And I’d love to share some with you.

Jamie
So I think one really important tip is to make routines your very best friend. When I first started teaching, I felt like I needed every week to look different in my classroom so that my kids would be engaged. This is a myth that I was telling myself. And it was causing me a lot of extra stress. I was going to Pinterest every Sunday like okay, here’s what I’m teaching this week, let me find a cool activity. And then the next week I was starting over.

Jamie
So every week I was introducing new activities to my students. And this meant I was wasting classroom time teaching how to do the activity. It also meant my students didn’t really know how to be successful. And every week they were having to learn how to do a different activity, which meant they couldn’t focus on the skill I was teaching.

Jamie
So if I’m teaching compare and contrast strategies with fiction texts, my kids aren’t even thinking about that. They’re like, Wait, where did she say we put this? Did she say we do it this way or that way? And now they’re not as successful with the literacy skill that you really want them to put practice in their center rotations.

Jamie
And then it also means they’re coming to you while you’re training your small groups going, Mrs. Sears, How do we do this? Where do we put this, and they don’t feel confident. So I learned the hard way after a year or so of just like constantly trying to put on a circus show every week, that routines make my students happier.

Jamie
And that they really can be engaged in center work without the centers changing every single week or even month. Activities can see the same throughout the year while the skill switches out. And that helps all of our students to be just to be more successful, but it helps you as the teacher with the prep and the planning.

Jamie
And so I know you have your Word of the Week. And if that’s a center rotation throughout the year, now, as a teacher, you prepare this bundle one time, it’s like batching, the preparation of your literacy centers Instead of taking time every single week to have to prepare, you schedule a chunk of time, and you batch up the preparation of a resource like this, and you use it over and over again, so that your students learn the expectations early on.

Jamie
And now they can focus throughout the year on the actual skills that you were really hoping that they would learn and master, so think routines. First and foremost, super important part of your center time.

Sara
I love that. And I mean, you were taking me back to like my first couple years of teaching where I was like my centers were just like, on the Hot Mess Express like I was doing that every week like cutting things apart and putting them in, you know, like file folders and manila envelopes. And then like, you know, not keeping them organized. And it’s like we had game board pieces everywhere. And students didn’t know how to play the games and sorts and I mean, all sorts of stuff thinking that like these fun, hands on activities, we’re going to keep my students engaged.

Sara
But you’re exactly right. It’s like when we’re constantly introducing new activities to our students and new games, like they are so focused on completing the task that they forget about the content, which is the most important part.

Sara
I love routines, I am always telling teachers like turn your entire instructional day into like one big routine, like there’s a routine for every part of your planning block, you know, morning work, reading, math, everything can become a routine. And you’re right, it makes students and teachers lives so much easier. So I love that, especially within the context of centers.

Jamie
Yeah. And once you have these routines, it saves you so much time in lesson planning. So I had a very specific routine for grammar. And it was a weekly routine, meaning every Monday was the same every Tuesday was the same Monday, Tuesday might not be exact. But every Monday if you walked into my classroom during grammar, you would see me doing the exact same thing. Every Monday was a PowerPoint every Tuesday was an interactive notebook activity.

Jamie
So now I can go into my lesson plan template, and literally add that to grammar for the year. And then each week, I can just go in and write which skill we’re doing, are we doing irregular verbs or you know, but I don’t even have to waste brainpower thinking about Yeah, what we’re gonna do each day, and it saves so much time.

Jamie
But it also is saving you that, I mean, decision making takes a lot of energy. And now you don’t have to keep making decisions, once you make the decision once about the center activities you want to have, now you don’t have to keep remaking the decision.

Jamie
You might throw something in special around us a certain holiday, but your students will be able to adapt to that better, because you haven’t been changing the game every week. So every now and again, when you’re like, hey, we’re gonna do something really cute with pumpkins this week, they can mold and amend to it because you haven’t asked them to make these changes every single week. So that is huge routines are huge.

Jamie
And then something I did in my center rotations, that seriously changed the game for me, and it might it might be something that would help some of your listeners, I had this impression that you should always have four groups all the time every day. I don’t know where that came from for me.

Jamie
I don’t know, I just saw other teachers doing it. I don’t know, no one really said like, you must have four groups. But in my head, you had four groups every day you met with four groups. And that was really hard.

Jamie
Because I have this limited chunk of time and the more groups I meet with each day, the more transition time there will be even if you teach your kids how to transition really well which you should, there will still be time wasted where they have to put away materials, get out new materials move around the classroom, get where they need to be for their next center or for the time with you at the table as a teacher.

Jamie
There was time wasted but also just felt chaotic to me. I felt like I was barking orders out I’m like, Okay, next center, go, go go. And then when they sat down, I’m like, let’s read let’s let’s close read. Let’s dive deep into this text. Oh, wait time to switch centers.

Jamie
Like how can we expect students to understand how to read and reread a text when modeling it to them and centers, we don’t even have time to do that? And so this changed everything for me is I still had four groups because I had a larger class.

Jamie
So I had four groups. I divided my class into four groups based on skill, but he only met with two per day. This gave us a longer chunk of time to dive deep in to text, it gave students longer to actually complete center work versus just getting it out. And then it was time to put it away. And it actually meant more minutes over the course of a week with each reader because there was less time wasted with transitions.

Jamie
And so I know it scares some teachers because they’re like what about my low reader? What if I don’t see them every single day? And I would say that my low readers really did well, because they got more attention from me, over the course of the week, even if it wasn’t more attention every day, it was more tension over the course of the week allowed us to deep dive into text, and actually finish text.

Jamie
Because there’s nothing worse than, like starting something and then you have to restart it like, Hey, does anyone remember what happened yesterday, and they don’t remember, and that’s not an enjoyable way to read. And so this allowed my students to actually read an entire passage and talk about it, answer questions, have a good discussion, before switching to the next rotation, which all of my students benefited from.

Jamie
And I found like, I can breathe, this doesn’t feel like a three ring circus quite so much. Not that every day was perfect, but not quite so much. And so that little change in my classroom made me so much happier.

Sara
I think that is such a good reminder, because I was just thinking about this very same thing, we we tend to focus so much on quantity, I feel like versus quality. And teachers have a checklist that they’re trying to go through. And I’m trying to meet with all my groups and the rotations and all of that.

Sara
But it’s sometimes we need to take a step back and think about is the quantity that we’re putting out actually of high quality. And if you’re having four small groups, but the quality of them is low, then reducing down to two is probably the right way to go.

Sara
I just was putting together a podcast episode that was along the same lines of you know, so often when it comes to like essay writing, we jump into essays and we want students to start producing essays before, they’re able to write a paragraph. And so it’s like, we got to slow down.

Sara
And we got to think about you know, rather than having them complete an essay, because that’s the assignment, like let’s really focus on developing the quality of a paragraph and just this idea of like in education, we need to be more focused on the quality of something versus the quantity.

Sara
And I think the same is true with our small groups too high quality small groups is going to go so much further in the year than if you met with four groups that were rushed, and you didn’t get through everything. And I know the way that you were describing your classroom is definitely how I ran by small groups for a long time.

Sara
Before I got to the point was like, wait a minute, why am I doing this? This isn’t benefiting my students. It’s not benefiting myself, like slowing down is going to be so much better for my students. So I love that reminder. So important.

Jamie
Yeah, sometimes education, it feels like it’s become like this race. Yeah, racing to get the most done. And I don’t know that at the age of 10-11, like, are we going too fast that can’t keep up with us.

Jamie
And why we’re racing, it’s really not a teacher fault by any means we’re racing because we feel the pressure from society from admin, even from the teacher next door to us who seems to be farther ahead. And so we’re constantly feeling like we’d have to race to keep up.

Sara
Yeah, I love that reminder. So important. Okay, I love these suggestions that you shared as far as how teachers can simplify centers, and I know that your book is jam packed filled with more ideas.

Sara
I’m curious, and maybe this is the chapter, but what is the favorite chapter in your book? Is it chapter four that has all these practical suggestions? Or is there another chapter that you’re really excited about sharing with your audience?

Jamie
You know, chapter four was definitely my favorite chapter to write. And I feel like me in the classroom would have really loved chapter four. But what’s so interesting to me as teachers are reading my book is that it’s actually chapter one that they tell me over and over again, is their favorite.

Jamie
And I’m really excited about that. In chapter one, I really shared a personal story about when I decided to be a teacher, and I stuck it on Facebook was many years ago, so I don’t know if you remember, but it was like, Jamie is and then you would fill in the blank. And so I wrote Jamie is going back to school to be a teacher.

Jamie
And I was so excited. I was waiting for, you know, all my friends and family to say we need to go Jamie, you know, and there was plenty of that. But my cousin who I was close to and grew up with, she said, You can’t be a good teacher and a good mom, you’ll suck at one of them.

Jamie
Whoa, I mean, the thing is that I respected her and she was a teacher. And I felt like maybe she knew something I didn’t know. And so I was in my head having this battle, like, No, I’m gonna show her I can, but also this sinking feeling of what if she’s right? So I went into teaching, feeling that like, what if I’m not a good teacher? What if I’m not a good mom?

Jamie
And in that first year, I can be honest and say I wasn’t being good at either of them. But here’s the thing that I realized is that I was defining good teacher and I was really good mom. But that’s a whole side story, but I was defining a good teacher wrong. And over the course of the last decade working with so many teachers, I’ve realized so many of us are defining good teacher wrong, and it’s not our fault.

Jamie
Our definition of good teacher is coming from outside sources, like our administrators, like society, like the parents in our classroom, a lot of teachers, they aren’t saying it, but in their heads, they think being a good teacher, it’s highest test scores. It’s making sure I have this Pinterest or I guess now it’s like, Tik Tok worthy classroom, you know, it’s working more hours is the teacher who does the most is the best.

Jamie
And I didn’t verbally say that, but I truly acted like it. I believed it in my brain, I thought I got to work 60 plus hours a week, I have to work on the weekend, I saw my mentor teachers doing it. So that meant that’s what good teachers did. My entire definition of good teacher was based on things I didn’t even really have a lot of control over, like student testing.

Jamie
I truly believe you can be a remarkable teacher and still have students who tests below level. I mean, absolutely, they probably didn’t come to you on level. And those tests don’t really gauge growth, they just gauge the current levels and who who got to decide those levels.

Jamie
So I was judging myself based on things that truly didn’t make me a good teacher. It took so long for me to realize this. But there was this day where I decided, You know what, I freakin just want to be the teacher who helps students fall in love with learning. That’s all I care about.

Jamie
I not going to overwhelm myself with all this testing nonsense. And I’m not going to work on weekends, because I want to be a good mom. And so when I changed my definition, and my definition became something like, I want to be an innovative teacher who helps students fall in love with learning, while working only 40 hours per week. I literally put that my definition.

Jamie
So my going home on time made me successful. It wasn’t staying late, that made me successful was going home. Like I got to check it off and go, Wow, super successful. But also, as I drove home each day, I could say, well, what’s one thing I did today to help a student fall in love with learning?

Jamie
And that’s easy. Everyday, you could come up with something right? You helped a student find a book that they love, you got to watch a student have an aha moment or a skill that they were challenged by last week. Every day, I could say, well, I was a good teacher today.

Jamie
Whereas my past definition, every day I went home thinking I’m not enough. This new definition, it was like the catalyst to come back every day and do it again. Because I felt good, I felt accomplished. And so my students got a better version of me the next day, because I truly felt like I was making a difference. And being that good teacher that my cousin talked about.

Jamie
I redefined my definition of good mom as well, because guess what, that was also a flawed definition that society had given me and redefining what good means for your roles, it is life changing. But once you have a good definition of success, you can now flip through my book, you can flip through Tik Tok or Facebook groups, and you can prioritize which things you actually want to do in your classroom or change in your classroom.

Jamie
Because you can ask yourself, would this get me closer to my definition of success? And even though it might look good on Instagram, sometimes you’re gonna say, No, it’s beautiful on Instagram, but that wouldn’t get me closer to working the number of hours I want to work or helping a student fall in love with learning.

Jamie
And so I’m going to push pause on that idea. Maybe, maybe I’ll come back later. But right now I can push pause on it. And it gives you permission to say no to things that won’t bring you closer to your definition of success.

Sara
Just hearing you talk about that I can see how that would be your teacher’s favorite book in the chapter. And I think that is so important. And I am so glad that you are giving teachers the tools and the ability to redefine what they view as being a successful teacher because I think that right there is going to help teachers fall in love with teaching again.

Sara
So that yeah, I’m so excited that you wrote this book, I really can’t wait to share it with my audience as well. Can you let my audience know where they can find you, as well as where they can get a copy of your book if it sounds like something that would help them?

Jamie
Absolutely. The book’s called How to Love Teaching Again, and you can get it anywhere that you buy your books, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, target.com. And you can find more information about me and the book at notsowimpyteacher.com.

Sara
And we will definitely link to all of that in our show notes. So again, Jamie, congratulations on your book, what a huge accomplishment. And just hearing you talk about it, I know that this book is gonna have a huge impact on education. So thank you for writing it for all of the teachers that we serve.

Jamie
Thank you Sara.