The Importance of Importance

I had the good fortune to attend and present at the Connections Conference last week.  The awesome thing about presenting at conferences like these is that my registration fee is paid and I get to attend all sorts of great sessions.  Plus I was lucky enough to be provided a sub for both days of the conference by my school, so I had an amazing opportunity to see many professionals and educators speak about some awesome and inspiring tactics that I am going to try to put to use in my classroom.

The best session, though, was one I found applicable to my classroom as well as my relationship with Tim.  It was about how students associate past experiences with their present ones and how that creates different logic in their minds than the logic in our minds.  Let me give you the example we were presented with:

A father reads to his son every night.  Every single night.  They sit down and read together.  One night, the doorbell rings.  Dad says: “I’ll go talk to them and I’ll be right back.”  He goes and talks to his guests and comes back.  Another night, the dad and son are reading and the phone rings.  It’s Grandma.  Dad says: “Let me go talk to Grandma for one second and I’ll be right back.”  He goes and talks to Grandma and comes back.  Another night, the dad and son are reading and the mom needs help with something.  Dad says: “Let me go help Mom and I’ll be right back.”  He goes and helps Mom and comes back.

Dad’s logic: “I read with my son EVERY night and no matter what happened, I always came right back to him.”

Kid’s logic: “Dad and I read unless something else happened.”

This puts reading as important, but not as important as the other things that were going on.

So what’s the solution?  Set aside time for reading and only reading.  No matter what happens.  Even if your neighbors come to the door with pie.  You keep reading until you’re done – because nothing is more important than reading.  The kid’s logic will change, because he will see that he is the most important thing to you at that time, and so is reading.

It took a few days, but something clicked.  And it had nothing to do with teaching.

OK, so that’s not entirely true.  Tim and I are both teachers, so very little in our lives actually has nothing to do with teaching.

For those of you who don’t know, teaching is an interesting profession unlike any other in that you have to work with people all day (even on days with meetings, you’re still working with your fellow teachers), you’re often asked to sponsor extra curricular activities which take up quite a bit of time after school, and you have to take a lot of work home with you in the evenings, on weekends, and during break because you’re surrounded by people all day and your after-school time is taken up by extra curricular activities you’re sponsoring.

From January through March, Tim and I both sponsored extra curricular activities.  We were often at school until 7:00 at night, and then we had to eat dinner and get some grading done and then get to bed so we can wake up at 4:45 in the morning to get in a brief workout because there’s no way that’s happening after school.

We tried to spend time together, but it was tough as you can probably imagine.  But I, trying to be the perfect wife, often put off grading until I was at school, trying to cram in any 5 minutes of grading at a time that I could so I wouldn’t have to take it home, giving me absolutely no downtime at school, all so I could cook dinner and tend to my husband.  In other words, I wanted to be the perfect wife – able to literally “do it all.”

Tim’s quest to be the perfect husband in this time had the same heart as my quest to be the perfect wife, but took on a different manifestation.  While my domain was the home like a good little girl, his was work.  His goal this year, and one that we’ve been talking about and working through, has been to earn as much money as he can.  He coaches two sports, does bus duty, and takes on any extra job he can find to make more money so we can save faster for a house.  But, for him, working at home comes with this territory.  If he isn’t 100% at his job all the time and making tons of money, he doesn’t feel like a good husband.

So, while he told me I was the most important thing in his life, almost every time I asked him to watch a movie with me or go out to dinner with me, he couldn’t because he had work to do.

In a way, I started to become resentful of his job.  We started fighting a lot, and I started finding other things to do while he was busy.  I couldn’t understand why I was feeling this way – why was it that I always had plenty of time for him, but he so rarely had any time for me?  And how could I be so important to him if he was never spending time with me?  The answer was staring at me in the face: we were both trying to show each other how important we were to the other in very gender-typical ways, and our logic about the situation was completely different.

Tim’s logic: This relationship is the most important thing to me, and that’s why I have to do all this work.  She’s putting her work off because she just doesn’t want to do it right now.

My logic: This relationship is the most important thing to me, and that’s why I have to put my work off – so I can make dinner and tidy up.  I know I’m important to him, but I must be less important than his work because he’d rather do that than spend time with me.

As soon as we realized this is was what was going on here, we were able to talk about it and work some things out.  Tim was able to put aside his work and spend more time with me a few days a week, and I was able to respect his psychological need to do work to feel useful on other days.  Of course, it wasn’t as nicely done as all that, but you get the picture.

It’s truly wonderful when you find ways to balance your work and your personal life, and it’s awesome when something you learn about your work can be transferred to your relationship.  It took some fumbling, but during our seasons, we were able to eventually talk and get our relationship back on track.

Now, of course, things are changing again.  We’re on spring break, which means we’ll both be home for 9 days and constantly in each other’s presence.  After working out our busy schedules, I’m almost excited to work out being constantly around each other.

Have you been in a situation like this with your partner?  I’d love to hear about it!

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