Teachers, Hold On to What You Know: Trusting Yourself During Testing and Evaluations

Testing season and evaluations can make even confident teachers question themselves. In this episode, we talk about how to stay grounded, trust your professional judgment, and teach from your values when pressure and opinions get loud.

The volume gets loud this time of year—tests, evaluations, and opinions from people who have never stood in your classroom. We’re turning that noise down and turning your inner voice up. This conversation is a reset for tired teachers who need both reassurance and a plan: you are already enough, and you can teach from your values without performing for every changing metric.

We unpack why moving goalposts—like demanding a year and a half or two years of growth—strain both teachers and kids, and how to ground your practice in what actually works. From the realities of conferring versus small-group instruction to reading the signals students send when a plan isn’t working, we look at instruction through a humane, practical lens. Your eyes are data. Your calm is an intervention. Your choices, guided by experience and evidence, can outlast trends.

We also challenge the tired myth that public servants should accept less. You are a whole person with a life that deserves margin and dignity. That’s not selfish; it’s essential for a stable classroom. Together we explore boundaries that protect your energy, routines that center learning over performance, and community support that makes the work sustainable when March brings testing and disruptions. Progress grows where pressure gives way to presence.

If you’re ready to trade performative extras for aligned practice, to trust your instincts, and to remember that what you’re doing matters, this one’s for you. Subscribe, share with a colleague who needs a lift, and leave a quick review to help more teachers find this space—we’d love to hear what “enough” looks like for you this week.

Links Mentioned in the Show:

February Freebie- GRIT STEM Story Station

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And February’s Theme
• 1:00 Reassurance: You Are Already Enough
• 1:32 Naming The Pressures: Tests And Evaluations
• 3:10 Public Perception And Teacher Worth
• 5:34 Benchmarks, Growth Targets, And Moving Goalposts
• 7:00 Trusting Professional Instincts
• 8:20 One-On-One vs Small-Group Reality
• 10:40 Teaching As Relationship Not Performance
• 12:20 Self-Trust, Classroom Signals, And Boundaries

Transcript

Welcome And February’s Theme

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hi, welcome to One Tired Teacher, episode 283. Teachers, hold on to what you know. So today we're talking about aligning our hearts, teaching the way that we know is right and best for kids, and really tuning into our own inner voices and our own inner knowing and focusing on that. Hope you stick around.

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Welcome to One Tired Teacher. And even though she may need a nap, this teacher is ready to wake up and speak her truth about the trials and treasures of teaching. Here she is, wide awake. Wait, she's not asleep right now, is she? She is awake, right? Okay. From Trina Debori Teaching and Learning, your host, Trina Debori.

Reassurance: You Are Already Enough

Naming The Pressures: Tests And Evaluations

Public Perception And Teacher Worth

Benchmarks, Growth Targets, And Moving Goalposts

Trusting Professional Instincts

One-On-One vs Small-Group Reality

Teaching As Relationship Not Performance

Self-Trust, Classroom Signals, And Boundaries

SPEAKER_01 0:54

Hey, so welcome back. This is our last episode in February. We've been focusing on reassurance and permission. And we are using STEM as a spark, as a teaching spark. And that's been the focus of February. And I want to remind you, you are already enough. You don't need to perform to matter. I hope you've really taken that in this month because it's such an important and true message. And I just want to remind you of it. I think it's important to be reminded of it. All right. So today's episode is holding on to what we know is true. And it gets, you know, it gets crazy sometimes when February gets loud with the expectations, the testing, and the pressure and the evaluations and all the things, the most important thing you can do is hold on to what you know. Hold on to what you know is good and true about teaching. I hear from a lot of teachers, especially in my We Do Not Care Club teacher chapter on TikTok. I hear a lot of tired, tired teachers. And it's not because we don't know how to take care of ourselves. And it's not because we're burning out because the job is not or it's too hard for us. It is too hard. Like it's not too hard for us. It's too hard, period. And that makes life exhausting. And the other thing that people often forget is that teachers are not just teachers, they're people, they're human beings. We have a heart, we have other responsibilities, we have lives as well. And just because we wanted to dedicate ourselves to doing something that means something, or we hoped that it means meant something, or we hope it does, doesn't mean that we don't deserve to also have a life. I remember hearing this person one time saying, well, they knew what they signed up for, or why would they have a nice car? Like they're a teacher. And I it made me so angry because what in the world? Why would we think that public servants should be treated like servants? Why would we expect them to have less than we have? Why? It just makes no sense to me. So a person who dedicates their lives to playing a sport is worthy of having a nice car, but a person who dedicates their lives to children isn't. Like that's I have a real problem with that. And at this time of the year, sometimes those kinds of words that people say and those kind of criticisms, they really they like stand out. You've done everything you can to protect yourself. You, you know, don't read comments and you don't listen to people that talk like that. And you avoid friends who have that kind of judgmental attitude. And maybe you've even eliminated them from your life. However, it still just rings out sometimes and it's hard. And when we have when all the things stack up, you know, just regular everyday teaching is sometimes really difficult. But then when we add in testing and we add in evaluations, it feels overwhelming. It is overwhelming because it's so much pressure. And that can start to feel like that's our worth. Like we're valued on a test score or an evaluation score. Or we the only way to show growth is to, you know, make sure that kids have shown a year and a half worth of growth. Like that's the other thing. They keep moving the benchmark. It's like originally we said if someone shows a year's worth of growth, that's wonderful. And then we're like, eh, I think it should be a little more than that. We think it should be a year and a half. Now I've heard in some places it's two years. I mean, do we think just because we say that, that means kids are gonna speed up their learning and their brain's gonna work faster and their development is gonna go quicker? It just doesn't make any sense. And it's a lot of pressure on people that have no control over how fast someone is learning something. And that's really frustrating. So, this is the time of year that I want us to hold on to what we know. Remember what you know in your heart, what you know about children, what you know about yourself, what you know about pressure, what you know about chaos. And allow yourself to trust your instincts. I think it's such an important part of teaching, is trusting our instincts. Like sometimes people will say things, like I have an example. When I was first learning about, um, we were changing again, the reading, you know, reading was changing. Reading is always changing. Let me tell you right now, I've been in this business since 1997, and reading has changed so drastically. And one of the things that we used to talk about was like one-on-one conferring with kids, which was insane. It sounded great. I read a book, it was sounded really interesting. I'm like, oh yes, every kid's gonna get, you know, a moment with you, and you're gonna, it's gonna be wonderful and they're gonna do so much better. Well, it was just ridiculous. There was no way I could get to all the kids, and the kids that were struggling were getting nothing, you know, or they were getting once a week. Like that's you can't meet with 24 kids in a even in an hour and a half reading block, because of course they keep making the reading block even longer. And so it's impossible, or even if it is possible, it's not for very long, it's like such a short amount of time. So it's so much more productive to work in a smaller group with kids that are, you know, maybe struggling in the same way. And some people will say that's that's not it either. They should be, you know, different groups. And I and I'm like, oh, for gosh sakes, the the expectations they just change and change and change, and they constantly make teachers feel dumb, like they've been doing it wrong every single time, even though I want to say it's not the teachers. You told us to do this, you told us to do it this way. You are the one that made me use this program. I just want to scream that sometimes. So remember, remember that. Remember where that's coming from, and also remember that you have free will. And if you choose to do what you do in your classroom, so be it. I just want to remind you, they can't watch you all day long, every single day. And I'm not implying that you should do something terrible or that you should do something illegal by any means, but I mean do what you know is right in your heart. Do what you know is right in your heart. Teaching is is a relationship that we have with our ourselves, with our students, with other teachers, with our administrator, with our parents. And it it's not a performance. It's not a performance. The fact that we have to constantly prove ourselves, even though you've told us how we have to do that, can be can be so difficult. It can be it can be so hard. It's like, I want you to walk this tightrope, but I'm gonna tell you how to do it. You can't use your own instincts, you can't use your balance, you can't use what you know is right in your heart. You're gonna walk on one foot, and then I want you to raise all four toes. You can leave your big toe down, but all four other toes have to be lifted up. And then I want you to bring your other leg up to your chest, and then I want you to balance a book on your head and hold an umbrella. And am I reminding you of the cat and a hat? Because that's what I'm thinking of. And then spin dishes. And oh, well, we need to add some more. The dishes don't work. So take that out. We're gonna do nope, change that. We're gonna have you spin books. We're gonna have you spin books. I mean, it's just it's madness. It's it's madness. So remember, remember, a teaching is a relationship, but it's also a relationship to yourself. So if I'm constantly going against myself, I'm hurting myself. I'm not trusting myself. And that doesn't lead to anything positive for me or for my students. So you want to trust your professional instincts. You want to remember that you know in your heart what is good for kids, and also you can see with your eyes how they're responding to things when they're crying or they're dragging into school or they're throwing furniture, it's not working for them. It's not working for you. And we have to be able to trust ourselves. And if if anyone is ever going to do that, going to trust teachers, I mean, it's hard to imagine, but we have to start with ourselves. We have to trust ourselves. You don't need to abandon your values to survive this season. You don't have to abandon your values to survive this season. We can do it. We can hang, we can do it. We have one another. We have one another, we've got to lean on one another. I think it's the only way. I think it's the only way to make it through. Also, I want to remind you that you're not behind. This is allowed to be enough. You don't have to go out there and stand on one foot and raise four toes and bring your other leg up to your chest. And you don't have you don't you can use your balance. You can use your balance. You're not behind. What you're doing matters. All right. We have concluded the month of February. We're moving into the month of month of March, which can be, you know, can be up and down because uh actually a lot of times that is actually testing time. And sometimes it is spring break, and so we've got all these disruptions going on, and so we'll talk about some things that have to do with March when we get to March. Today we're in February, so we're gonna stick with February. All right, remember, you are enough. Hold on to what you know is true. And if you didn't grab February's freebie, my grit story stem story station using After the Fall, grab it. Trinadebrie teachingandlearning.com forward slash grit, or grab it in the show notes. Until next time, sweet dreams and sleep tight.