Recreate

This pseudo-first year has been the most difficult year of my life despite the support of my two co-teachers.  Between screaming parents, unbelievable behavior, and students with baffling academic challenges, this year has been more than enough to make a lot of newbies quit.  And how do you go home, let it all go, and return the next day with a purpose and a smile on your face, knowing it's a new day and your best chance to make a difference?

A professor and brilliant educator once said "the most important thing you can do as an educator is to recreate."  He used this as a sort of double entendre: utilizing both meanings re-create (to create again) and recreate as in recreation (a activity done for enjoyment).  Things are always more eloquently stated by their original founder, but here is my interpretation.  Your passion for teaching is like a fire.  Right now it is fed by youthful enthusiasm, injustice, love of children, creativity, desire to change the world... etc. etc.  Some day along the line there will come a day when you tire, children treat you with disrespect despite your efforts, you work in a school where your creativity is stifled because of a emphasis on closing the gap, or whatever the case may be.  Your fire will dim, and it is your job to know how to rekindle that fire.  Recreate.  Recreate the passion and feed the fire: find others like you and join a discourse community, go camping, read a book in the sunshine, walk on the treadmill, drink a margarita with your girls, whatever it is that makes you happy and rekindles your fire.  The work will always be there, and no matter how proactive you are, it will never be done (if you are a true educator), so take a moment to take care of yourself.

Let me use another metaphor.  On an airplane the stewardess that gives the safety spiel always says this (or some form of this): "Mothers, put your oxygen mask on first.  Your child cannot take care of him or herself in the event that something happens to you, so take care of yourself first and then you can be assured of your child's safety."  The same is true in education.  We can work ourselves to the very bone staying up all night and working weekends, keep ourselves propped up with caffeine, and become estranged from our family and friends but this pace can't keep up forever, and you and your students will suffer.  So take the time to recreate.  Our students need passionate, rested, enthusiastic educators in their classrooms.  This advice has kept me alive and enthusiastic this year.

Thank you Dr. Ronald Beghetto