Be a Tigger!

With school starting tomorrow, my day has been filled with meetings and trainings. While some of the meetings seemed to stretch space and time so that days seemed to pass in what should have been hours, others had some really good, uplifting moments.

Out of all the things I heard, the ones that stick out the most are about how we as teachers can make a difference in the lives of our students. This is why we go into teaching. There are students in our classrooms that need to be told they can reach their goals. These are the students that don't hear or see that message at home.

A teacher does not teach lessons, they teach students. Anyone that can read can go into a classroom and follow a lesson plan. It takes a teacher that cares about his or her students to really find a way to connect the content of a lesson to a student. Seeing the light of understanding go on in a student, that understanding of who they really are, and the great worth they are, is worth more than the monetary rewards of teaching. That is part of why I love to teach.

One last thought that was shared. There are a lot of hard things we all have to go through. In education, we are getting more and more unfunded mandates, and more is being asked of us. The bar is being set high, which is good but challenging. So as we continue to improve and make changes, are we going to be a Tigger, or an Eeyore?