Why We Fight…

Dear Teacher,

I do not know how you feel right now, but I feel like I have been in a fight.  Not a fist fight, but a battle.  The beginning of this school year has been a little rough.  My students have been great!  I am not talking about them.  It has just been tough to get things going.

I have written a lot about the changes that I am striving to make this year.  It is not easy to dramatically change how you do what you have been doing for a long time.  This is my eighth year of teaching, so I am trying to break a lot of old habits and undo a lot of the “old ways” that I have taught.  When the going gets hectic and the clearness of my schedule gets muddied, I want to fall back into what is comfortable.

Yesterday was most definitely one of those days.  I had to constantly remind myself why the changes are important.  I had to keep telling myself why I needed to keep going on the road that I am on.  I had to look at myself and tell me that I can not give up and I can’t surrender.

It was hard.  I was left feeling beat up by the battle by the end of the day.  So now, at the beginning of a new day, as I sat and thought about what I might want to write for a post, I wondered what I needed to hear myself.  What I came up with is that I need some motivation.  Something to pump me up.  So I went on a search.

I found a pretty motivating (and a little funny from the way it was set up) set of movie speeches to get me fired up and ready for the day.  Have a watch and listen with me.

I love the way that was put together!  Are you more ready for the day now (or tomorrow if you are seeing this at the end of the school day)?  I know I am!

As I was looking for this, I found another video that was shown at a training I recently went to.  This video helped me this morning, as well.  It is a look at the recent past and the exponential changes we have seen in present and full of predictions for the continued changes into the future.  It is a reminder that we are teaching students for who the future is unknown.  There is a statistic that keeps changing (in the upward direction) of the percentage of jobs that will be available to our students when they are adults that do not exist at the moment.  This is in the video.  This statistic never ceases to astound me.  It is eye-opening to think that our students are going to enter a world that does not exist yet, and this world is unfathomable to us at the moment.  We HAVE to be on our game.  We have to fight!

I probably ought to share the video.  🙂  Even if you have seen it before, it is worth another watch.

After this, I don’t have a lot to say.  I need to let all of this sink in for you and let it motivate you for your “fight” today.  I do want to close with a quote that goes along with the video and what this information means for us as teachers.  It is from Eric Hoffer, a 20th Century American philosopher.  What is amazing about this quote is that he past away in 1983…a little before the impending technology boom that has caused much of the exponential changes that we are seeing.

In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.

Teacher, I hope you have a great day.  I hope you have a great end to the week.  I hope next week brings some of the awesome that you are working towards with your student.  You are awesome and amazing!  You are fighting the good fight.  Keep fighting and keep on teaching!

Love, Teacher