My View
Our Need for Smaller Plates
BY ERIK BURMEISTER/School Administrator, January 2022

THE WORLD OUR TEACHERS, parents and students inhabit is busy, to say the least. The hope and excitement most of us felt in the fall for a new year — especially this one — quickly bumped into the reality of educators making deep dives into curriculum, IEP meetings and reporting burdens; parents operating shuttle services, filling volunteer needs, setting bedtime and wake-up routines; students dealing with homework, social pressures and grades. And the school year is only about halfway through.

It all feels like a lot. Because it is.

Often, we refer to our responsibilities as our “plate” and when our plate gets “full,” we begin to see important tasks fall off the plate. When this happens, we have two choices. The first is to publicly beat ourselves up expressing our guilt that we dropped the ball while privately internalizing stress from disappointing others and ourselves. 

The other option, not at all uncommon in Silicon Valley where my school district is located, is that we constantly enlarge the plate hoping that somehow the laws of time and space will be defied and everything on the plate fits without missing a single task.

The reality is that neither of these options is healthy.

A Better Solution

A third option does exist, but it’s one not enough people take advantage of. Maybe the best solution is to make the plate smaller.

It’s like the difference between a buffet and prix-fixe menu — cook fewer items, make sure the items on the plate are the most important, and take the time to prepare them really well. When organizations or people try too hard to do everything, nothing gets done nearly as well as it should.

The same is true in our families, classrooms, schools and work.

Managing Expectations

As a superintendent, I’m bombarded with myriad problems and a whole host of proposed solutions. It’s also not unusual to be thrown several solutions that are seeking problems.

When we find ourselves in times where there really is just too much, we need to focus. Make the plate smaller. Manage the expectations of others (and yourself) by doing the following:

»Take the time early to identify the most important priorities. Start with a wide net and purge until you have the mission-critical tasks.

»Communicate clearly and often about what those responsibilities are.

»Referee when other priorities try to sneak their way in.

»Support, encourage and celebrate yourself and others along the way.

»Let go of the guilty feeling that not everything is possible.

You Can Do It!

These suggestions manifest themselves in all parts of our lives. For teachers, this looks like identifying the power standards and building learning experiences around those outcomes; saying no to unnecessary meetings; remembering that not everything that is “assigned” must be “graded” (in the traditional sense).

For administrators, this looks like narrowing the professional development focus to the two most important efforts and saving all the other great ideas for the future; canceling meetings that could be handled via e-mail; and narrowing the number of nighttime activities you agree to participate in.

For parents, this looks like whittling down the number of outside-of-school activities for each child to one or two favorites; limiting playdates; and saying yes to only one volunteer responsibility.

For students, this looks like choosing a reasonable course load; getting to bed early; reserving hangout time with friends for the week-end; and limiting social media use.

By no means is choosing to make the plate smaller easy or popular. You are most certainly going to get the stink eye from some when you say, “Sorry, no.” But it’s worth reminding ourselves that we do have a choice when considering our relationship to the plate. Sure, we can make it bigger. Or we can keep on apologizing and feeling guilty when things continue to fall off of it, but is that really the life we want to live?

If the answer is no, then it’s time to go plate shopping.

ERIK BURMEISTER is superintendent of the Menlo Park City School District that serves the communities of Menlo Park, Atherton and East Palo Alto, Calif. Twitter: @MPCSDsupson. This column is drawn from a post on his blog, Sup's On: A School Superintendent’s Thoughts on Education, Community, Parenting and More.