My how time flies! Sometimes, the best of ideas get placed on the back burner. Maybe for good reasons. Maybe because the rhythms of life took you somewhere else for awhile. Either way, I've decided to return to this place to share my thoughts (and my adventures) into this journey we call teaching.
It really is a journey. One on which we hope to grow and become better teachers; for our students, our students' parents, and for ourselves. Although it is sometimes a difficult journey, filled with self-doubt, unending criticism, and daunting goals, we trudge on. You hope that the passion you had when you began this career as an educator will carry you through. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn't.
We all reach those dark moments. The moment you wonder whether or not you want to (or can) carry on in a career as an educator. Some of us realize we can't and leave. And that's okay. Choosing to do something different is really just another choice in life and not necessarily an indication of failure.
For some, the passion continues to brew; although it feels a million miles away. You look in the mirror and wonder what happened to the idealistic educator who so passionately put together their first classroom that first year. Or second. Or maybe even tenth. You know that passion still resides within you; buried deep beneath the pointless PD, laundry list of standards, requirements to post learning targets, and overwhelming evaluation rubrics that make it clear no one can ever really be "highly effective" in every area because of those nasty little "all" or "every" clauses in the matrix.
And then, you make a choice. To stay. Like every other choice in life there are pros and cons. You decide to focus on the positive and overcome the negative. They exist with every decision we make after all. You recognize you need to make some substantial changes in hopes of rekindling that passion. They will take work of course; much worth doing usually does. And then you begin to feel that passion, rise yet again. And it feels...right.
