by Krissy.Venosdale | Feb 3, 2011 | Reflect
You really can’t spend any time on Twitter these days without feeling inspired. Follow #edchat or #edreform and you’ll see it. From all over the world, simultaneously, educators are tweeting about the need for change. Every single tweet is like a little Lego brick towards progress. Legos by themselves are just little square pieces of brightly colored plastic… but together… they make amazing things. We must all remember that those things were not built overnight. We must stay open-minded to the fact that there are not set blueprints for building. Most importantly, it’s not a project that will be built alone.
Remember when you were a kid and you rambled through your box of legos not caring what anyone thought of things you were building. But doing it because it was what was in your mind. Your creative spirit flowed right into your green spaceship, or pink house, or even the red bionic dog you built. We all need to get back to building. Someday we’ll look back and remember that although it wasn’t easy, it was worth it in every way.
by Krissy.Venosdale | Feb 2, 2011 | Reflect
I have been thinking about teaching A LOT lately. Sometimes I become so frustrated with “The System” that I think it might be easier to become a zookeeper’s assistant, a snow plow driver, or start flipping a burger at a local diner. You know what all of those things have? They have consistency. They have independence. They have a specific guidelines to follow. You work, you work, and you see what you have accomplished. You step back and see your freshly fed alligator sleeping in the sun, your clean roads being enjoyed by travelers, or families smiling while they eat your burgers. You don’t have newspaper articles saying that you are failing. You don’t have government reports about failure. But, what would I be missing? I wouldn’t LOVE my job.
I recently googled the definition for “Passion” and read: Passion (from the Latin verb patior, meaning to suffer or to endure, also related to compatible) is an emotion applied to a very strong feeling about a person or thing. Passion is an intense emotion compelling feeling, enthusiasm, or desire for something. …
The words “suffer” and “endure” caught my eye. But so did enthusiasm and desire. Teaching is not about taking the easy road. All of the news stories, the hype on “Waiting for Superman” and the standardized testing nightmare aren’t going away overnight. But we will endure it because we have enthusiasm and desire. We have passion. If you don’t love what you do in life, do something else. For that very reason, no matter how frustrated I get with “the stuff” going on in education, I’ll unlock my classroom door each morning and continue. Why? Because I love it.
