By Michelle Murphy, OSU College of Education
Resilient Teaching Voices Series
As a new instructor at the College of Education in the Department of Practice and Research, I have learned a new skill set to maintain resilience during great change. In August, I made a significant decision to transition from the K-12 world to higher education, and this shift to a new career has been invigorating and more challenging than I imagined. I was having difficulty understanding why this change was so challenging, until I took the time to learn what was holding me back.
As a district literacy coach and reading specialist for 18 years, I have been creating and facilitating adult learning in a multitude of formats for years. For the last ten years, I had been in one district, and my work felt second nature. My foray into OSU started in 2024 when I and a few colleagues were offered the opportunity to create a course for OSU’s Professional and Continuing Education (PACE) department. We developed an online course for in-service teachers, Teaching Early Literacy from a Multilingual Perspective. After developing this course for Canvas and instructing it for five terms, I felt that I had a deeper understanding of adult and online learning than I had previously. Even though I was gaining experience with a new modality of adult learning, it wasn’t preparing me for the massive change of working with undergraduates, shifting my work location from home to online, and the amount of new learning required to understand different systems in a new organization.
Through this transition I was very excited by the new learning, though at the same time, I was not feeling as effective or efficient as I had been as a literacy coach working with multiple schools and grade levels. I found myself missing the mark at times, and even though I was working long hours, at times I felt as though I hadn’t made the strides on a project that I had anticipated. It was during my commute home after my in-person class when I had time to think about why I might be missing the mark.
During my drive I was looking for inspiration and chose to listen to Brené Brown’s new podcast series, Dare to Lead. In this particular podcast, Brown was reading excerpts from a chapter in her new book, Strong Ground: The Lessons of Daring Leadership, The Tenacity of Paradox, and the Wisdom of the Human Spirit (2025). Brown read through chapter 18, Lock-In and Lock-Through Power, which discusses the components needed to be “locked-in” for optional work energy and then why “locking-through” is an important part of the process. As Brown read, “We seem to lock in when engaged in four different types of experiences requiring different cognitive, behavioral, and emotional resources; mental toughness, flow, deliberate practice and deep focus.” (347). At this point, I knew that the engagement I had with my new work hadn’t reached the point of feeling “locked-in,” as Brown had described.
As Brown continued to read, she explained the six elements of flow and I realized, “This is it!! This is what is missing and preventing me from being “locked-in.” Brown described flow as “a gratifying state of deep involvement and absorption that individuals report when facing a challenging activity and they perceive adequate abilities to cope with these challenges” (349). She goes on to define the six areas of flow including the “intense and focused concentration on the present moment, merging of action and awareness, loss of reflective self-consciousness, sense of personal control or agency, distortion of temporal experience and experience of the activity as intrinsically rewarding,” (349).
It was after this list that I knew I wasn’t able to check the box on any of the elements of flow that would contribute to my ability to create the locked-in engagement needed to be as productive as I had been in the past. I was not feeling intense focus when working on a project because I was also learning new technology as I was shifting from a Google-based platform with the district to a Windows-based platform at OSU. I was constantly needing Google questions to find answers for simple questions, and this constant stopping was disruptive to my concentration, which was leading to me not merging action and awareness. Which then led to the pattern of reflective self-consciousness; I was distracted by thinking, “Why is this so difficult?” This thought pattern led to not feeling a sense of personal control and temporal experience. Through this process, I wasn’t feeling the task as being intrinsically rewarding as it had been in the past. I knew I needed to make some changes to increase my resiliency to help this shift of a new career be successful.
To begin with, I evaluated my workspace and determined what was important for me to begin feeling that intense engagement. I literally cleared my space, left my phone in the kitchen, turned my computer notification to do disturb, and immediately felt ready to begin. I took time to reach out to the needed technology resources at the university to get my questions answered in order to have an uninterrupted workflow. I changed my self-talk to be asset-based and to give myself grace. When I did hit frustration, I went on a short walk to see the sky and felt ready to re-engage. I shared with my family what my work time was going to be for the day to eliminate being disturbed at times when I would be locked-in.
As I went through this list, I began to feel a weight off, and my work productivity increased, and my joy returned.
As an instructor for the College of Education and working with future teachers, I began to relate my recent experience to that of new teachers. I noted what would be the specific elements that would be helpful for new teachers to consider as they began their transition into the workforce, and realized these were the same components that lead to resiliency in teaching. Having experienced this opportunity to rebuild resiliency in a new arena has not only brought joy and productivity in my own work but has given me a new purpose of sharing this experience to help build the resiliency of our future educators.
References
Brown, B. (2025). Strong ground: The lessons of daring leadership, the tenacity of paradox, and the wisdom of the human spirit. Random House.
Brown, B. (Host). (2025, September 23). Brené on lock-in and lock-through power (No.2) [Audio podcast episode]. Dare to lead podcast. Vox. https://brenebrown.com/podcast/lock-in-and-lock-through-power/
About the author: Michelle Murphy holds a master’s degree in education and serves as an instructor in the College of Education’s Department of Practice and Research. With 19 years of experience in K-12 education, she has worked as a secondary high school teacher, reading specialist, and literacy coach. Murphy also serves on the Oregon Department of Education’s Literacy Advisory Roundtable.
Editor’s note: This is part of a series of guest posts about resilience and teaching strategies by members of the Fall ’25 Resilient Teaching Faculty Learning Community facilitated by CTL. The opinions expressed in guest posts are solely those of the author.
Top image generated with Microsoft Copilot.
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