Searching for Ponies...

A person once defined positivity this way:  two little girls were shown two identical rooms filled with... manure.  One little girl folded her arms, stuck out her bottom lip, and began crying.  The other little girl gasped and jumped into the room, digging into the nasty-smelling stuff with joyous abandon.  When she was asked why she was doing that, she replied: "Well, with all this poo, there must be a pony in here somewhere!"

Sometimes in education, what we have is a lot of poo. We have meetings.  We have meetings ABOUT meetings. We have deadlines.  We have ofttimes conflicting standards coming at us from the local, state, and federal governments.  We have to have 100% of our children at or above grade level in all areas.  We have to follow rules and regulations set down by school boards or government agencies who often don't know much about the daily business of teaching.  We have to make sure that each of the students is testing at high levels, even when those students don't care about the tests, because those test scores may determine whether or not we get rehired.  We have to create life-long learners out of students who only live in the moment.  We have to... well, shovel a lot of poo.

And no one likes to shovel poo.  I guess there could be a few people out there whose job it is to shovel poo around and they wake up each morning thinking... "Hooray! I get to shovel poo!".... but on the whole, none of us like that job.  It becomes exceedingly easy to complain about the smell, the grossness, the very baseness of the whole thing.

I can look at the pile of essays on my desk, the inbox a mile long, the calendar overflowing with IEP or 504 meetings during my prep time, and various and sundry required trainings and think, "How can I possibly get this all done and still have a life?"  I can fold my arms, stick out my bottom lip, and cry.  (And, to be honest, I sometimes I do...I don't claim to be Little Mary Sunshine all the time.)  OR I can take a deep breath and plunge in to all the muck with the hope that all this muck is just covering up the very real possibility that I will find a pony (metaphorically).

The pony we find in that educational muck might be the student who changes his attitude from apathetic to interested because he finally has a plan for his future after doing that research project.  Or we might find the pony in the girl who was so standoffish and rude but who has since become one of the sweetest girls in your class because you took that extra time to find out what was up with her and helped her through it.  It may take a lot of digging through poo to find, but if we're willing to put on our boots (sometimes hip-waders) and grab our shovels, we will find that all that hard, stinky, back-breaking work was worth it.

Reflective Teaching: Day 9, Unknown Accomplishments

Day 9--Write about one of your biggest accomplishments in your teaching that no one knows about (or may not care).

One of my biggest accomplishments in my teaching that no one knows about?  I don't know.  I tend to be a blabbermouth about my accomplishments and blow my own horn constantly.

Just kidding.  Mostly.

I think of teaching as building cathedrals (hence the title of my blog and my profile information).  In my debut blog post I talk about my educational philosophy (click here to read it).  I believe that each teacher does so much that goes under the radar.  Just like the woodcarver I mentioned in that post, we teachers do so much that no one ever sees.  He carved wonders that only God would ever see; we spend hours grading, giving feedback, planning for lessons, going to workshops, and more that no one ever knows about.

In addition to all that work that goes, often, unappreciated and underfunded, we accomplish miracles in the lives of our students that may never be acknowledged by anyone.  That one student who finally turns in his work without having to be told (this time... you spent all year nagging...er...working on that skill); the shy student with social anxiety who gives a speech after months of encouragement; the kids who frustrate you all year because they "don't get it" turn out a stellar performance on the State Tests--all these are examples of the marvels that teachers accomplish but do not always get recognized about.

Sometimes the miracle is that we don't strangle that kid who constantly pushes our buttons.  Or maybe it's that we manage to get the students to get work done the day before a holiday.  Or perhaps the great accomplishment is that we are able to make it through a day when we're really not feeling well.  Maybe our accomplishment today is that we were able to stay just that much ahead of our students to make it look as though we really did know what we were talking about.

We do so much that goes unnoticed, intentionally, not necessarily because people do not want to acknowledge us or our work.  If we do our jobs correctly, lesson plans run smoothly, classroom management is seamless, and the day runs like a well-oiled machine.  Our jobs SHOULD look deceptively easy to the person looking from the outside in.  Those of us in the teaching community know that we live in glass houses, and our own particular fishbowl gets a lot of attention when things go wrong.  This is the very reason we attempt to make our daily miracles look mundane.

So, my biggest accomplishment?  I'm not going to tell.  On purpose.