Don't forget why you are doing this job.

"Everyone who remembers his own education remembers teacher, not methods and techniques.  The teacher is the heart of the educational system."- Sidney Hook

Each and every one of us who chose to become an educator selected this path for a very distinct reason.  I can assure you that it was not the same reason for each of us, nor did this decision occur at the same moment in our growing up journey.  For some it was the influence of an amazing teacher and for others, it was just the pure love of learning.  There are some who started down one path and heard the call of teaching somewhere along that path.  Whatever the reason and whatever the timeline, we decided we loved school enough to make it a life sentence.  We made a conscious decision that we WANTED to go to a school building and spend our days in a classroom for the majority of our life.

In the summer of 2015, ASCD published a bonus digital version of the Educational Leadership magazine, which included a visual summarizing a survey of 20,000 teachers answering the question "Why did you become a teacher?"  The top answers were:  85%- To make a difference in the lives of children, 74% to share their love of learning and teaching, 71% to help students reach their full potential, 66% to be part of those "aha" moments, 50% because a teacher inspired them when they were young.  Educators do this job because they genuinely care about the success of children and because they genuinely love learning.  Let me share a little secret- children learn best in classrooms were they can tell that their teachers genuinely care about them and genuinely love learning.  Let me share a reality- teachers sometimes get so bogged down with compliance factors (see my blog from April 4) that they forget who they really are as an educator and why they do this job.

One year, when I was a principal at an elementary school, we had a lot of change happening all at once- we were shifting to a workshop model in literacy, we were completely changing our evaluation system, we were changing our math resources, and we were shifting our assessment practices.   My very talented and dedicated school family was quite stressed and it was evident.  After seeing an extremely strong, veteran teacher cut off a very rich, engaged discussion with her students because, as she told me, "I was concerned that my mini-lesson had surpassed the required maximum of 15 minutes", I realized that we needed a re-boot.  It was clear that my teachers were putting themselves in a box that I never intended to build.  I sent a survey to all of our parents asking them to think about a favorite memory they had from their elementary school years and something they remember learning in elementary school and how they learned it.  Then I asked them to ask their child to do the same.  I was pleased by the high level of response from our families.   I took joy in reading their memories, then I compiled all of their comments and shared them with my staff.  As you can imagine, the comments were filled with stories about fun and engaging activities, caring teachers, interactive projects, and relationships.  We wrote some of the overarching themes on rocks and put them in jars that we kept in our lounge as a  visual cue that we must remember why we do this job and that, first and foremost, it is important to make school fun for us and for the students.  The constant change was still challenging, but I realized we needed to slow down and that I needed to remind teachers they had "permission" to be themselves and to have fun with and for their students.

I love going into classrooms where the students are engaged, where I can see the excitement of learning, where I hear laughter and see smiles, where I see students willingly engaged in productive struggle, where students groan when the bell rings because it is time to go home.  Adding fun and excitement does not reduce rigor, nor does it mean that you cannot cover content.  In fact, you may find that you cover more content because students are engaged and present!  Why have students read pages and pages of a social studies book and answer questions on a worksheet when you can, instead, immerse them in the content by simulating what they are learning about and become the historical or governmental figures.  There is no need to make copies of math worksheets for students to practice their facts when, instead, they can play games that require them to use their facts in the gameplay.  Rather than giving students a test on potential energy, kinetic energy, centripetal force, centrifugal force, acceleration, deceleration, friction, etc...., you can have them build a model roller coaster and then label and describe how all of the forces and principles of physics make the coaster work.  When teaching students about volume, you don't have to give them an algorithm, you can give them graph paper and scissors and challenge them to build containers to see if they can figure out on their own how to calculate volume.  When reading to kids, it is okay, at times, to just read with joy and enthusiasm without stopping to talk about what they should be thinking, predicting, connecting or synthesizing.   And sometimes....you can just do something because it is fun and you just want to spend time building relationships with your students.

Don't forget why you are doing this job.  Love what you do and love how you are doing it.  Believe in your passion- it will work for the students and they WILL learn.