I #loveteaching

     I #loveteaching because of the impact I get to make on our future. I believe all children come to kindergarten with enthusiasm, joy, and wonder about the world, even students whose traumatic lives make it difficult to express it. Teachers have the opportunity to further foster those traits in their students each and every day of each and every school year. Students who learn from these teachers will be creative, kind, and positive learners who will grow up to create the kind of world in which we all want to live. To be clear, when I say teachers, I mean to include all educators-principals, counselors, specialists, interventionists, para-educators-ALL educators. There are so few professions that get to say they play such an important role in the lives of others as well as the future of our society and the world.
     Don't get me wrong. What I'm talking about here is not easy. Teachers must juggle the restraints, demands, and requirements of their jobs with creating a culture of safety, acceptance, and challenge in their classrooms and schools. This can sometimes feel like an impossible task. However this is where every teacher can make a choice to persevere in the work they know is so critical despite the demands of their jobs. The key word here is choice.
     Teachers can choose to build relationships, to work hard, to respect all families, to improve their teaching, to challenge students where they are, to recognize all staff as playing essential roles, to enjoy teaching, and to be all in for education. I know I've made these choices, and it has paid off in the learning I see every day.

Core Values

Recently I have struggled with productivity. It seemed that my day-to-day management responsibilities had completely dominated my schedule leaving no time for the big picture work of fostering positive school climate and improving teaching and learning. This focus on management leaves me uninspired, yet I know how important it is and certainly must get done. Staff need to know who is covering lunch on an early dismissal day, students who misbehave on the bus need to be spoken to and their parents need to be called, and intervention meetings need to be scheduled. However if this is all I do, then I'm not truly helping to improve my school, which is always my goal.

Then I stumbled upon an organization that provided me with some guidance. It's called Asian Efficiency, and it was mentioned in a Tweet I read a few weeks ago. I followed the link and discovered a series of podcasts called The Productivity Show. Each week the podcast focuses on a different aspect of making your life better and more productive. I scrolled through the archived podcasts and discovered shows about core values, morning rituals, and getting to inbox zero, to name just a few. What I have realized is that reflecting on and writing down both my personal and professional core values as well as goals, is where I need to start in order to become more productive.

If I can clearly identify the core values upon which I operate, I can make better decisions about which activities are most inspiring for me. If I can also clearly identify my personal and professional goals, I can then prioritize which activities should get most of my time. Of course my management responsibilities will never go away, but perhaps I can get better at eliminating, automating, or delegating those tasks that fall low on my priority list. I've only just begun this process but I'm feeling more inspired already. Daily reflection on my core values and goals is helping me stay focused on the most important parts of my life and my job which deserve most of my time. Getting to inbox zero will be icing on the cake.