The Decision

At some point each teacher decided to become a teacher. The journey to that moment comes in myriad ways, on different time lines, with varying brands of a sense of calling to the profession. There are as many different stories behind the journey to the classroom as there are teachers in the classroom.

Those are the opening lines to a chapter of the book. The simple notion that we all chose to dedicate ourselves to serving young people in a variety of capacities is the centerpiece of exploring the adult asset of Commitment to Learning and Teaching.

My general contention is that our general health as educators can be measured by our relative connectedness to the values and principles we used individually in order to choose this profession. In simple terms, that means that the closer my teaching is to my core values, the happier I am. The further away my teaching feels from these core values, the more likely it is I'm losing (or have lost) my joy in teaching.

The challenge and promise of this thinking is that there are two levels an individual can engage to address this commitment level: internally what can the individual do to nurture and foster core values; externally, what can a group of adults do to create an environment that lessens the distance between practice and the collective values of a staff.

As a starting point, though, I encourage all to press rewind in our thinking and try to best recall the process we went through in deciding to enter into this work. What impacted your decision? How close are you today to following that decision? What distance is there today between your PRACTICE and your DECISION? What are you going to DO about the distance?

Enjoy yourselves! Have a joyful day.