Good Enough

Great resignations and greater expectations

For twenty years I’ve been a teacher first and all other identities second - learner, singer, sister, daughter, reader, writer, wife, mother, friend. I am the sum of all these parts, but with “teacher” as the umbrella term under which all the others have been hidden.

As of June 30th, 2022, that term will no longer be my go-to. I am resigning from my long-held position with the Toronto District School Board and starting a new career as an…artist? A freelance writer? A podcaster? A creative? I don’t even know what to call myself! As “teacher” shifts down the list, I’m not yet sure what new title rises to the top.

Before the pandemic hit I published an article called “The Good Enough Teacher” for the Journal of Expanded Perspectives on Learning. I was taken with psychologist DW Winnicott’s notion of “the good enough mother” as connected to my experience of teaching. This term is purposefully off-putting. Some read it like a shrug, like only decent pizza or lukewarm coffee. But it means so much more. In the NYT Avram Alpert wrote that Winnicott’s mother figure “manages a difficult task: initiating the infant into a world in which he or she will feel both cared for and ready to deal with life’s endless frustrations.” Said another way, to be “good enough” means doing the best one can but with the great expectation of releasing control when it comes to the end result. There is mystery buried in this idea where one creates conditions for growth but does not know what’s going to come up from the ground. With my article I wanted to encourage those new to the profession. Instead of striving for some sort of impossible “best,” I wrote about learning to be a “good enough teacher” with the experiences and nuanced vocabulary to better show care for others and for the self. For a “good enough teacher” the agency of the student is as important as the care proffered by the teacher - maybe even more!

There’s a sort of strange irony in the fact that the publication I wrote the article for emphasizes expanded perspectives on learning. Two years and a global pandemic later, my perspective on teaching and learning has expanded. That perspective now includes the possibility that for me to be truly “good enough” I need to leave teaching behind.

In a week I’ll be handing in my school keys and walking to my car. I’ll drive down Jane street, through the never ending mess of subway construction. It will be a hassled commute dominated by unfinished thoughts of how to translate the beauties of school life for those who don’t teach. The kind of translation writing that requires time I have not had for two decades. Then I’ll turn on to my street and park. But walking up the stairs to my little blue house will be different this time. I will drop the mantle of “teacher” with my bags at the door and walk into a new season of life, good enough.