Teaching is not for the man or the woman who wants to do things perfectly.
Yes, I was a perfectionist — Arggh! No, I kept thinking that I had to do things a certain way, or else.
I resented the term at first, because that just engaged a greater degree of self-regard and self-concern.
A teacher needs to be at peace with himself, no matter how bad things may be going. Yet a teacher's work is never done, it seems, and the hardships and uncertainties which rock and roll in the classroom from day to day will take their toll, even for the most stable of instructors.
"You're a perfectionist!" My university supervisor told me. "The students can see your anxiety, and they will use it against you. You have to get rid of your anxiety, or at least internalize it."
That was the most useless piece of advice that I had ever received! Nonsense, pure and simple. Fear and unease cannot be removed by doing or thinking. We are called to believe in a perfect love, one that casts out all fear (1 John 4:18.) I wish that I had learned about this love much sooner. Then again, I probably would have quit teaching even sooner.
The principal at a local charter school had called me a "perfectionist" too. That was the last straw:
"Don't label me!" I fired back.
I cannot believe that instructors and administrators are so out of step with the truth that informs a man. Telling people that they have a problem and that the issue is something that defines who they are just creates more problems. People who insist on having everything "perfect" do not need another reason for someone to point at them and tell them to change.
Students do not need that kind of stress, either. It's bad enough that they come into class, that they have to measure up to skills and knowledge which they have not yet learned, and now they have no other choice but to pretend to get by. I am convinced that many students act out in class because they do not know what to do, they do not know how to get anything done in the class!
"You're a perfectionist!"
I wish someone had expounded to me this verse so much sooner:
"For by one offering
he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified." (Hebrews 10: 14)
I have already been perfected as a child of God. For so long, though, I was busy trying to have the right emotions, the right thoughts, I was never at rest.
Yet my parents feared for the worst for me, I guess. The world tends to operate that way, too. You better get in line, or else. That does not get students to learn, and that does not help teachers to teach, either.
Perfection is not something that we try to live up to. That kind of thinking is the same evil that led Adam and Eve from the rulers of the earth to vagabonds in a fallen world. "Right and Wrong" cannot make a man right. He needs life!
The more that I tried to be a good teacher, the worse that it got! I had to make sure that everyone succeeded, yet that was never going to happen. It is a joke what some leaders expect out of their teachers. They demand perfection from the teachers, and so they hit up the students to do their best, as well, yet the whole charade ends up one big mess of frustration.
This world is not interested in teachers who are laid back, either.