As you might guess, I am wholly intrigued by what it means to teach well.
Why?
I am intrigued because great satisfaction comes from teaching children well. If you do a good job, you come home each night with a sense of purpose, and the feeling that you've done your part in making the world a positive place for yourself and others.
As I explore learning and teaching design with depth this summer, I am reminded that teaching is an art, science, and professional choice. New standards with respect to student learning and teaching demand that educators are well educated lifelong learners dedicated to professional growth and impact. In order to meet this professional demand with strength, educational organizations will have to provide contexts that support professional work including fair pay, state-of-the-art supplies and materials including technology, reasonable schedules, and inspiring spaces.
Educators have to step up to these new standards with effort and care, and communities need to do the same by recommitting their dollars and support to education with a focus on what's best for the learners: young, traditional learners, and older learners who may attend school for retraining, enrichment, or specific learning needs.
This evolution in learning parallels evolution and revolution in other fields as well, fields such as energy, environment, agriculture, technology and more. We are moving towards big, new ideas related to how we work and live together to best effect a quality, prosperous life. These changes require new mindsets about what it means to work, raise a family, meet basic needs, take care of one another, achieve happiness, and prepare our world for the next generation.
We may look back in time, but we can't go back in time--we've moved too far ahead to return to days we reminisce about. We may also look ahead in time, and try to move towards a vision that's positive rather than a vision that's worrisome for our children and their children.
We all have something to contribute to positive, forward movement. None of us can see it all or be it all, but we can step ahead each day with thoughtful contribution rather than greedy self-interest. Yes, life is short, but it can be short and positive rather than short and negative.
Sometimes it is difficult to move towards positivity in a world that seems to idolize behaviors, actions, and materials that do not promote the best of who we are or what we can be--a world that exaggerates and details the flamboyant acts of a few rather than the hard, caring work of many. Yet social media, greater communication, and more choice gives the populous more powerful choices and voice about what matters, and it is in our best interest to use that choice and voice to demand simpler systems, systems that the average man or woman easily navigates and impacts, rather than complex out-of-reach systems of policy and action.
Bringing it back, the focus is what each of us is able to do to contribute to positive movement for ourselves and others, what steps can you take today, tomorrow, and after that to optimize your time and effort?
A preachy post, but one that propels me onward with my quest to teach children well.
