It's Spring
From the desk of Carol C….
I was hoping for warm weather. I was ready for it. After all it was spring break. Instead, the weather was cold. It snowed. All was not right with my world. Then late in the week I noticed daffodils sprouting, tulips blooming, and iris stalks peeking through the dirt. Spring had begun to poke its head up through the ground. My world suddenly smelled sweeter.
Coming back to work after a break can be difficult. You may need to get back into a routine, and on top of that face unpleasant tasks before you. In classrooms across the country educators are back to spending long hours on schoolwork and facing the new, inevitable end of year testing based on the Common Core. Once again all is not right with our world. But I wonder if we find the equivalent of daffodils, tulips, and irises, our world will smell sweeter.
What should we notice? Where do we look? We only need look at the students we teach. In them we will find new growth. Our students are able to do now what they could not do at the beginning of the year. Think about all we have taught and students have learned. How to read, multiply, analyze poetry, and problem solve. How to jump rope, respect people’s differences, speak in front of a group, and accept failure as a natural part of learning. Our students have absorbed tons of information and changed some unacceptable behaviors. They are more self-reliant. Now is the time of year we need to take stock of the gains our students have made. If we look we can see our students poke their heads up through all of the hard work they and we have done. And just like the spring flowers, with further nurturing they will continue to thrive. We owe it to our students and ourselves to recognize these achievements and take pride in them.
What else have we missed seeing? How essential we are to making our world smarter. Without educators less students would learn to read and write at a proficient level. These students would not be able to read a newspaper, menu, unfamiliar street signs, and written information on the job. Math? Without an understanding of math principles, students would not be able to “to do the math” behind constructing buildings or writing computer animation programs. Finally, fewer of our leaders would be able to analyze our past in order to move peacefully and successfully into the future. What might happen in North Korea? What’s ahead for our nation? None of us can predict, but there’s a greater chance of moving into the future with peace and success when our students of today are well versed in history and its implications for the future.
There are numerous ways we, as educators, greatly influence the paths our country takes. What a tremendous and awesome responsibility to help shape the future! So take in and smell the flowers. Spring is here. “Accentuate the positive”. Enjoy the many reminders of how lucky we are to be educators!
P.S. The inspiration for this blog came from Kelly Gallagher and his book Reading Reasons. Gallagher is a classroom teacher and widely published author. All of his books are clear, concise, and extremely useful to other educators. Check out them out. I learn something new from him every time I pick up one of his books.
How can you register? Go to the ERG website for registration forms. Grab school funds while they’re still available or be the first to receive 2013-14 funds. See you there!