How to Rebuild Confidence After a Hard School Year
Tips and tricks for getting back to your best, most confident self.
Welcome to the second part of the “Taking Back Your Summer” Series here on The Bookish Classroom!
Over the last four weeks, we’ve talked about habits to boost your mental health, take care of yourself, and go from burnout to bliss. You can find those blogs below if you’d like to catch up!
But now that the summer is officially in full swing, it’s time to rebuild that confidence after a tough school year.
My Toughest Year
I remember the summer after my first year of teaching.
The school year had been tougher than I ever imagined with unsupportive admin and colleagues. The students had serious behavioral and anger issues, which were documented in their IEPs, and meant that building trust was a challenge. And I was teaching classes I wasn’t trained or certified to teach without an aide as I do not hold a special needs certification.
By the end of every school day, I felt like I’d failed.
Other teachers said the most heinous things to me. You should go teach at a nice, quiet white school. You don’t have the “it” factor you need to do this job. At least your handwriting is nice. (That last one was from my boss.)
When the last bell on the last day of school rang, I ran home. I sat in my car outside of my house and felt the full weight of those first ten months of my teaching career, and I just felt hollow. Exhausted.
I slept a lot initially. Eventually I had enough energy to make plans with friends. But mainly, the question that plagued me as I got closer to September was, “How am I going to make it through another school year?”
The answer was: I had to build my confidence back up.
The Rebuild
Every school year is different. Every class has a different dynamic. Some years a new initiative means more paperwork on top of the already abundant amount of paperwork. IEPs. Benchmarks. Diagnostics. Yearly goals.
And that doesn’t even cover the stress of phone calls home, grading, and lesson plan/prepping.
I’ve learned that there is no way to come out of a school year the same person you were at the start. Too much happens that shifts your mindset, stress levels, and perspectives.
You’re not alone.
But the summer is your time to get back to yourself and rebuild the confidence that may have weakened over a particularly tough school year.
As I started to come out of my “summer after first year” fugue state and started to think about how I was going to make it through another school year, it became apparent that I needed to get clear about a few things.
The things: my own belief in my teaching abilities and creating boundaries.
How I Rebuilt My Confidence (and How You Can Too!)
You can recover from a difficult school year. It simply takes a little intention.
Here are the ways I was able to use the summer to rebuild my confidence that I could take with me into the school year:
Journaling
I’ve mentioned this in almost all of my blog posts prior to this one, but journaling through the tough stuff has been a game changer for my confidence building and my mental health.
When I was journaling after that first year, my main focus as a means to build up my confidence were:
What were my wins from the year?
What lessons did I learn about myself in both my personal and professional life?
What did I want the next year to look and feel like? How can I make that happen?
Journaling on these topics help you see that there are wins in even the most challenging of years, and that there are always valuable takeaways that you can use to make your practice even better.
If you want to start a journaling practice or reflect on the school year, you can download this free Teacher Reflection Mini-Journal linked here!
Leaning on Friends/Colleagues
Not all the teachers at my school were awful to me. And I would have never made it through that year if not for Sparkle, Celine, Mike, Ken, and Justin. Thank God for them.
They were an ear to listen. They were a shoulder to cry on. And they were the hand that led me out of the classroom when I needed some fun. But they were also the foundation for helping me rebuild my confidence.
Having other teachers to lean on is essential. They understand what you’re going through, can empathize with your situation, and give you helpful feedback (and laughs) to get you through the tough times.
Making a Plan
I know absolutely NO ONE wants to hear this right now at the beginning of July, but eventually…it’s worth it to make some plans for the school year.
Maybe that’s how you want to decorate your classroom. Or what books you want to teach. Or thinking through a new kind of lesson you want to try.
But going into the school year with a plan is going to help you confidence tenfold because you’ll have a platform on which to stand.
That second year, I went into September having thought through and prepped some lessons for the first few days of school. They were “getting to know you activities” that were as much fun for the kids as they were for me to learn more about them!
These opening day activities created a sense of trust between me and the class from day one that blossomed into a productive and wonderful school. One student even told me that she met her best friend on the first day of school in my class because they had been paired up for an “introduce your classmate” activity.
These were lessons that I used every year going forward and with always the same outcome. Which is to say I was sobbing saying goodbye to every class at the end of the school year.
You can actually find these resources in my TpT store:
Back to School | FREE Favorite Things Getting to Know You Activities
Back to School | Trivia No Prep Google Slide Presentation Activity
Back to School | Community Building Trivia No Prep Google Slide Presentation
Back to School | Writing Prompts, Independent & Partner Activities
Go Confidently into Your Next School Year
It’s only July. But this is the perfect time to start rebuilding your confidence for an amazing school year.
And no matter how hard last school year was, know that you did an incredible job. Take the wins from your year and let that be what you remember. Let that be what reminds you of your why. Let that be the foundation of who you are as a teacher.
What’s one win from your school year? Let me know in the comments!
Enjoyed this blog? Like, subscribe, and share!
Until next week, friends.