Teacher Talk #1

Teacher Talk: Dealing With Bad Days

Sorry I have been MIA this past week. Things have been pretty stressful at work and SUPER busy. On top of that, I am taking another graduate course towards my Masters +45 credits, which meets at night and on some weekends.  So, that is really cutting into my reading time. 

Things in education can be challenging and sometimes you just want to throw your hands up in the air and give into frustration. I rarely get frustrated with the children. I get frustrated with educational laws, too many standardized tests, school boards, the educational system, and the requirements that teachers have to put up with.  Then I'll get a card from a former student or a former student will visit me and I then remember why I do this.  Sometimes I have to remind myself, especially on bad days, of two of favorite quotes about education. I thought I would share them and more importantly, how do my fellow educators deal with bad days? 

My first quote was said by Haim Ginott, an elementary teacher in Israel. He wanted to discipline without humiliating or destroying the self-worth of his students. Too often, as teachers, we forget how important our influence is in our classrooms.  Ginott points this out the best when he said, “I have come to a frightening conclusion. I am the decisive element in the classroom. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor; hurt or heal. In all situations it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated, and a child humanized or dehumanized.”  

My next favorite quote: "I am a teacher! What I do and say are being absorbed by young minds who will echo these images across the ages. My lessons will be immortal, affecting people yet unborn, people I will never see or know. The future of the world is in my classroom today, a future with the potential for good or bad. The pliable minds of tomorrow's leaders will be molded either artistically or grotesquely by what I do. Several future presidents are learning from me today; so are the great writers of the next decades, and so are all the so-called ordinary people who will make the decisions in a democracy. I must never forget these same young people could be the thieves or murderers of the future. Only a teacher? Thank God I have a calling to the greatest profession of all! I must be vigilant every day lest I lose one fragile opportunity to improve tomorrow. (Ivan Welton Fitzwater)

So, if you can read this....thank a teacher.  :) 

Book review coming up for Hex Hall by Rachel Hawkins! It was a fun read! Keep your eye out for my review.