Lighting a spark
This chapter speaks greatly to the saying if your excited about a subject, it will show through in your teaching and your students will become excited about it. It can be difficult for teachers to keep that level of excitement all the time. Im not saying they are not enjoying what they are doing, but sometimes as per our standards or curriculum chances are that we have to teach something that really doesn’t excite us. For me personally it is social studies, particularly historical lessons. This is something that never interested me in school and to e teaching it now, it still doesn’t excite me. I would much rather pull out a science lab or go exploring in a fiction story. But it is something the kids need to learn and it may excite some of them, and you don’t want to put out that possible light for them. So we put on a happy face and muscle ourselves through it. Will you always get a win? Probably not, but at least you can say you gave it your best.
Being the board
This chapter spoke volumes of the things going on within my school. Many of my co workers, myself included are to busy placing blame on other co workers or our boss to try to get any real movement forward to make our school a better place. Our school is clearly divided into 2 sections, the upper and lower elementary. It seems impossible right now for me to believe that there is hope for our school. That may be my skepticism and blame placing speaking but I believe for some of our bridges to be mended that many of us would need to change our thinking. To follow through with something like being the board, takes a strong person. I sometimes think it is engrained in our DNA to place blame on others. I cant say that sometimes after the dust has settled you cant look back and see that maybe you had some fault in the incident also. But to be completely honest, im not sure I am ready for this way of thinking, at least where I am now. Maybe at a fresh start, or a new place, or maybe in my personal life. But at work I feel like it is too much of a “fight for your life” place and there have been too many wedges driven between myself and some certain co workers to really be mendable at this point.
Creating frameworks for possibility
This chapter was a little hard for me to take in. Trying to compare it to the mission statements that we wrote for our school this year, or trying to think of it as a personal goal that you might write for yourself. Im really just not understanding and I just think its because I do not have much to compare it to. He makes some nice points about things to make sure you include, or don’t include when you are making a vision statement. Maybe finding a vision and having some kind of goals to reach that vision written down would be a good thing for me to try. Would probably really help you reach your goals. This I should really have some more exploration in.
Telling the WE story
This was a great chapter. Explained how one should be thinking in any relationship regardless if it is with a lover, a friend, a co worker, or anyone else in between. This also goes back to the placing blame. To point fingers and place blame puts people on the defense. But to talk about WE, then people are less likely to feel backed into corners and will be more receptive to you and your ideas.
Erica,
I strongly believe that you should have a passion for what you teach so that the spark ignites when you share with your students. However, that spark can easily fade to black, and completely go out and that is when we need a boost such as this book, conference or any material that lights that spark again. I have written a vision statement and have in the past have made my students write one. It is that roadmap that guides you to where you want to go. It can be difficult to move from the game piece to the board, I agree. Sometimes so much is going on in life that it is easier to be the game piece.
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