Sometimes being vulnerable and taking a risk in front of our students is the best thing educators can do. I have decided to go on a writing journey with my students through the use of this blog. They each have a blog, and we will all post a weekly blog to tell stories, communicate ideas, make arguments, and expand our horizons. One of the questions I ask myself on a daily basis is, how can I make myself better today? No, I’m not upset with who I am as a husband, father, teacher, and friend, but it’s about being the best that I can be. It’s about embracing the process, working doggedly toward our goals and our passions and developing strong relationships along the way. My students and I will share our passions, goals, successes, and failures through our blogs. We will continue to work toward developing higher character, which means demonstrating more kindness, more gratitude, and more persistence. We will work toward developing these qualities while chasing our passions and developing a keener sense of our purpose.
My goals for the blog posts will be to give students a glimpse into my writing and thinking process, as well as a glimpse into what drives me. It may be a narrative of a trip I’ve taken, a goal I have, a sporting event, movie, or book that stirred my emotions. Please join me on this journey as I learn to grown every day. In the meantime, while I’m excited for the next school year, I am relishing the opportunity to spend time with my family this summer, play some golf, relax, read, and recharge for what I know is going to be an amazing 2018-2019 school year!
How many of you wake up every day and think about what your strengths are? Not a single hand went up when I asked this question during class yesterday. Full disclosure, my hand would have remained down as well. The assignment began with me asking the students what their strengths were, not just academically but in general. This proved to be a difficult task for some, and when the students asked me to disclose my strengths, I then began to empathize with the difficulty of the assignment. Why is it so difficult to identify and discuss our strengths? Maybe it is because we are too busy worrying about everything that could go wrong in our day, the stresses we have, our comparisons to others, or maybe it just seems too vain to point out the great things about ourselves. Although the lesson began slowly, students began to think outside the box and feel good about the strengths they were writing down on paper. Then came the sharing, and ...
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