Most of my blog posts are inspired either by our podcast conversations or things from my classroom. This week, though, is a little bit different. It came up as a result of a conversation at school with a student, but not in class or, for that matter, in any relation to any school topics. It’s about my hair cut, actually.
During the lunch period, I swung by another teacher’s room to chat, and there were some students hanging out in there as well. I can’t for the life of me remember how it happened, but they were talking about how I was bald last year. I (half-)jokingly said, “Hey, I’m balding, not bald.” I shave my head, as I told them, because my “fashion,” such as it is, is just trying to keep things as low maintenance as possible.
Again, it’s a totally random, meaningless comment, but I’m weird, so those are exactly the type of comments that live in my head. I found myself wondering, why do I want my look to be low maintenance? I’m not short on time. I consistently get to the school 45 minutes before my contract requires it. I could definitely spend 10-15 minutes every morning on style. Not hair, though, since that doesn’t really grow. But style? Sure. I know the reason why I don’t. It’s because it doesn’t matter to me, so why I would invest time?
It did, though, leave me wondering what I spend the time saved on. Have I been investing that saved 10-15 minutes each morning on reading? Prayer? Fitness? Nope. As far as I figure, after a couple days of thinking about it, I’ve saved myself 10-15 minutes every morning just so that I can waste that time. I need to move on from thinking about my time in terms of maintenance, and make the shift to performance. I don’t care about style, so it’s fine not to spend a lot of time on it. I do care about personal growth and development, especially in my role as a teacher. I need to keep growing if I’m going serve the kids in my room the way they deserve to be.