For those of you who don't know, an IGNITE is a short, timed presentations. You get 20 slides and 15 seconds per slide, for a total of 5 minutes. It is stressful on a normal day, but adding in the fact that sometimes I couldn't even remember to brush my teeth or got lost on my way to school after having driven that same road for years, I was quite nervous about getting up in front of everyone and forgetting it all.
I decided to record my IGNITE presentation to share it with a wider audience, in the hopes of shedding a light on the difficulties of post concussion syndrome and raising awareness on the wide range of symptoms. Here it is:
I had a chat with my students – I told them that there were 3 weeks of school left – and I could either stress us all out by trying to cram all this learning in, or we could decide that there would be some things that we'd have to skill or that we'd have to review next year and try to enjoy the last couple weeks we had together. We decided to enjoy our time – and worked on what was important without being stressed about doing it all.
As a teacher who prides herself on doing the best she can, I had to accept that my best was not the best I was used to. Working full days was exhausting. And being tired made it harder to remember things. Students had to remind me to eat – to drink water – they used YouTube videos to work on math skills that I could not wrap my head around. But most importantly, I took time for me. At night, I didn't work on lesson planning, I worked on taking care of myself. Eating right. Going to yoga. And when I got the doctor's okay, getting back on my bike. I learnt a lot about work life balance and about how much mental health plays a role in general health.
There are still lots of things I want to say about mental health and teaching, but that will come in future posts. For now, I am trying to use what I learnt last year to make sure that I take better care of myself moving forward.
Learn. Reflect. Blog.
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