Little changes can be tough, too

Not all of life’s changes that bring on stress are big changes. When I finished substitute teaching at the youth development center in 2013 and became a full time teacher there, I was assigned to a particular classroom that has been my home ever since. By the beginning of 2015, the facility was no longer a youth development center; it was a medium security prison for men. I’ve stayed in my job, helping men progress in their education and/or obtaining a high school equivalency diploma for the last 7 years while working from the same classroom.

Early in 2020, I was told that I would be giving up my classroom and swapping with another teacher. I think I was more upset with the manner in which the decision was relayed to me than with the actual decision, but I duly pouted for several weeks while I pondered how to grow up and put my big boy pants on to make the situation work better for me. As June began, I realized that the other teacher and I had similar class schedule changes happening late in the month, so it would be the ideal time to make the switch happen. He agreed, so we began the process on June 19th and finished in today, the 24th.

Some of our inmate students helped with the heavy lifting, but my colleague and I did our share, too. And as much as I dreaded the change, I’ve already discovered that I like my new setup very much. It really wasn’t a big change, but it brought on a lot of distress. I’ve tried not to complain, because the men I teach face greater changes than this every day and have less control over how they handle those changes than I did over this. I’ve tried to stress the positives about this room swap and the good reasons for my friend to have my old classroom (direct access to the Library, where he and the other teacher co-teach a number of classes, for example).

The biggest drawback of the switch-off is that when we traded room keys, I lost access to the hallway bathroooms! Now I have limited bathroom access and have to plan my breaks more carefully (staff bathrooms are kept locked). I may have to see if I can get a bathroom key from the officer in charge of keys. The second biggest drawback is that my old classroom had a sink, because waaaaaaaay back in the day, that room was the culinary classroom. I used to wash out my lunch utensils and refill my water bottle, as well as wash my hands or give my students a cup of water when needed. Still, I have a bigger classroom now, with more accessible closets and a better setup for my desk and teacher corner.

All of us have little changes we have to deal with all the time, and some of them cause us stress. We anticipate that the change will bring difficulty for us, and we decide with prejudice–pre-judging–that the change, therefore, is bad. That makes us resist, or want to resist, whatever the change will be. When we pause and think about what may be good about the change, we often find that we’ve been stuck in a rut and need to move out of our comfort zones, or that we need to be challenged to think of others instead of just ourselves.

This classroom change will help my coworkers meet the needs of their students better than before, and I’ll still be able to meet my students’ needs. In fact, during the course of the move, I discovered materials I’ve needed for my classes, so I can be more effective in helping my students. We need to be open minded about change, and that is not our natural tendency. Personally, I have to trust God that being open to change means that He will change me to make me more like Him: More loving, more gracious, more holy, more righteous, more tender, more thoughtful, more patient, and in all other ways more like Jesus. By doing so, with my eyes fixed on the Author and Finisher of faith, my heart, mind, and life will be filled with peace, and there will be no room for stress about a classroom swap or anything else.