
Find the calm in the storm of teaching!
In recent years, the expectations and responsibilities of a classroom teacher have grown. The result is exhausted teachers trying to do their best to impact students learning.
What happened to the magic of teaching? How do we find the energy to rekindle that passion?
Because of the overload, we often allow our stress to control our thoughts, emotions and actions. We need to stop and consciously take control. Someone said, “We save what we love. So if we love the earth, we will save it.” We must find what we love about teaching and save it. We can no longer allow the stress of the outside world take away our treasures. We need to find our values again, and let them direct us and impact student learning.
We do not need another voice telling us we are stressed. We know that. What we need are solutions. To find the solutions, we need to move passed analyzing and theorizing about the complex, overlapping issues (many outside our realm of control.) We need a practical, common sense approach that focuses on the core of our daily life in the classroom.
The next series of entries are about my journey back to the classroom and the common sense strategies I discovered and used to make my daily teaching life full of magical moments.
