PEN Mondays - Your Work This Year Matters More Than You Think

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5 min read

That Unfinished List? It’s Not the Whole Story

If you’re new here, welcome to PEN Mondays, where we explore more of the socio-emotional aspects of teaching. You’ll see us again on Wednesday with a brand new tech tool and academic study to supercharge your classroom.

The school year ends in a strange blur.

Desks get pushed back into straight lines, bulletin boards come down, and that “to teach” list you wrote in September is still sitting there - incomplete.

You meant to get to fractions. You had grand plans for an essay unit. Maybe your classroom library still has books you never got around to sharing.

And now, with the year drawing to a close, that persistent voice creeps in: “Did I do enough?”

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Teaching Isn’t a Checklist

Let’s be honest: teaching can feel like sprinting through a marathon while juggling flaming folders of expectations, assessments, and emotions - all while someone occasionally tosses you a new initiative just for fun. It’s no wonder so many teachers finish the year feeling like they fell short.

But here’s the truth: teaching is not a checklist. It’s not measured by how many standards you “covered” or how many chapters you made it through.

It’s measured by the depth of what you built - and not all of it shows up on report cards.

The Seeds You Planted Will Grow

Every year, educators are handed an impossible task.

You’re told to hit every outcome, meet every need, differentiate every lesson, respond to every email, manage every behavior, and still keep students smiling. But learning isn’t a conveyor belt.

You don’t “finish” it by June.

Real learning is messy, slow, and deeply personal. It grows in fits and starts, sometimes in silence. The lessons you taught this year - even the ones you feel didn’t land- are now seeds waiting for their moment to sprout.

The Things They’ll Actually Remember

Students may not remember every assignment or concept, but they’ll remember how they felt in your room.

They’ll remember the way you paused to really listen. They’ll remember that day you turned the lights off and let them work quietly when you knew the class just needed a moment. They’ll remember your kindness, your patience, your sense of humor - or the way you stood up for them when no one else did.

What you gave them might not fit neatly into a gradebook, but it was no less essential.

You’ve Done More Than Teach

You’ve spent the year not only instructing but also coaching, mentoring, parenting, refereeing, counseling, and advocating.

You supported the student who came to school hungry, or the one who kept forgetting their pencil because no one at home remembered to pack their bag. You adjusted lessons on the fly when a fire drill interrupted your momentum. You wrote detailed feedback even though you were running on caffeine and fumes. You carried stories home that no one else knew about.

You navigated tears - theirs and your own - and still showed up the next day.

You Weren’t Supposed to Finish Everything

Of course you didn’t “finish” everything. You weren’t supposed to.

Education is cumulative. What students learn now sets the stage for what they’ll understand next year and the year after that. Just because something didn’t stick the first time doesn’t mean it didn’t matter.

Sometimes, students need to hear something a dozen times before it sinks in. Sometimes, they need a break - a different teacher, a different angle, a different year. What you introduced this year might become the missing puzzle piece next fall. You are not the only chapter in their learning story, but you are a critical one.

Stop Measuring Yourself Against the Impossible

Still, the pressure lingers. Maybe you’ve felt it from admin, from parents, from social media posts that make it look like every other teacher is nailing it with color-coded lesson plans and perfectly scaffolded units. Maybe you’ve felt it from yourself.

That voice telling you that you didn’t do enough. That you didn’t work hard enough. That you should have pushed more.

Here’s Your Permission to Rest

Let us offer you something radical: rest.

You do not have to earn your rest by burning out. You don’t need to justify it with test scores or classroom data.

You get to rest because you are human. And humans, especially those who pour themselves into the emotional labor of teaching, need time to recover.

You Were Enough - Even If It Didn’t Feel Like It

You are not a failure because you’re tired. You are not a bad teacher because you didn’t “cover everything.” You are a good teacher because you kept showing up. Because you believed in your students even when they made it hard. Because you created a space where they could feel safe, seen, and maybe even excited to learn - and that’s not nothing.

You Can Let Go of the Guilt

You did enough. Maybe not in the ways you hoped, maybe not in ways anyone else will ever fully understand, but enough all the same.

So as you wrap up your year and start folding up bulletin boards and recycling outdated memos, take a moment to breathe. You don’t have to carry every undone thing into the summer. Let some of it go.

You did the best you could with what you had - and that’s exactly what your students needed.

What you did this year mattered. More than you know.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

We would LOVE to hear from you!

Reply to this email, or send us a message on Instagram! We’re here to walk with you in these crazy times!

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