Leading From The Heart

by Tracy Rosen, teaching & consulting since 1996, blogging about it here since 2007. All views are my own and you should take them with a grain of salt, I do.

Category: Connecting

  • Passion exists inside me, not inside a job

    This blog post has been in the works for a couple of weeks now and was coaxed out by Dan Callahan’s post One for the Record Books over at Geek.Teacher. His post reflects on the mixed feelings he has around changing schools, changing positions.

    My own recent job change has had me thinking along the same lines.

    Dan writes:

    I’ll admit to being very conflicted that I’m abandoning a lot of the core elements that have defined my first eight years as an educator. My new position is going to be so drastically different from what I’ve been doing on so many different levels, and it will differ in a lot of ways from what I set out to do when I got my first job.

    * I’m going to be moving from a semi-urban district to a much more suburban environment.
    * I’m going to be moving from middle school to elementary school.
    * I’m going to be leaving special education to work with a much wider portion of the student body.

    In my darker moments, I’ll admit, it feels like I’m selling out. While I know that my new position will have its own challenges, I have to admit that those areas highlighted above feel important, and it feels like I’m abandoning them.

    As many of you know, I loved my last job. It was infused with ideals of teaching I believe in strongly – working with students who have been marginalized much of their lives and showing them it doesn’t have to always be that way, putting the student before curriculum, the necessity of relationship, the heightened sense of making a difference in students’ lives.

    I used to teach students in grades 10 and 11 at an alternative program, kids who were at risk to not graduate high school but were identified as bright, needing a different environment. Close to half of my students were Native students (Mohawk from Kahnawake). I now teach French in an elementary school in a rural area of Eastern Ontario and at first I, like Dan, thought that I was abandoning those ideals I held close by leaving that job.

    Those feelings are also entangled with the sense of real abandonment I fear I’ve left my students. You see, I took the new position with 4 days of teaching plus an exam period left in the year at the old school. The decision wasn’t easy but necessary to gain experience in the Ontario school system. I was able to take it because of the tight teaching team that exists in that program. I didn’t leave my students to flap in the wind with a random substitute teacher. I left them with some of the most caring people I know. That is another fear I have, attached to another one of my ideals, that I have left a teaching team that embodies collaboration, caring, and raising the bar for ourselves and our students.

    So, while I was excited to be starting something new and to be on the track to better work/life balance by working at a school in my area of the world, I was also thinking about everything I just wrote about. Not to mention the fact that all of this was happening in June, not usually my most energetic month!

    Soon into my new job, however, I began to make connections with my colleagues and with my students. The first time a student came to me on the playground, “Madame Tracy, please help,” I thought, “All is good”. I realized that I am still excited about helping kids to learn, though in different ways. And I remembered, it is not my job that defines me but me that defines my job.

    I find inspiration when I need it and at the end of my 2nd week at the new school was intrigued by a tweet in my twitter feed from Elona Hartjes:

    The link led to a talk on TED by Srikumar Rao called Plug into your hard-wired happiness. The line, “passion exists inside you, not inside a job,” seemed louder than the other lines that were spoken in the video. And I realize that everything is going to be ok because I love and am passionate about working with kids and teachers, about being part of a caring community dedicated to the children within it, about creating hope for the future within community. My job helps me to live out my passions but it isn’t the sum of them.

  • June in a sentence

    My twitter feed tells me that some of us have finished teaching for the year, some of us have not only finished teaching but are on summer break already, and some of us are still out there.

    Teaching in June. What a situation to be in. It happens every year and each year it is just as challenging to keep things exciting, to keep the bar high for my kids and myself. Well, come to think of it, it usually isn’t as challenging as this year.

    This year I have an extra added bonus kind of challenge. You see, I haven’t done much June teaching at all in the past 9 years or so. I’ve been a high school teacher and the June teaching time is usually only a few days long before ‘the exam period’ starts (raising some … tension … when I’ve worked in schools that housed both elementary and high schools).

    On June 1st, 3 days before I was scheduled to stop teaching for the year, I accepted a position as an elementary school teacher until June 30th – placing me smack back into June teaching mode! As the new teacher, no less! So my challenge is getting oriented AND keeping things interesting and relevant for the kids. One of my grade 6 students asked me why we were doing a certain activity – what was the point. Yikes. The point was that I was focusing on classroom management in that class (34 kids! I’m their 3rd French teacher this year. They are testing me big time!) and I just needed them to sit at their seats and focus on a piece of paper in front of them and, really, writing a summary of a play that we are (trying:) to complete by the end of the year is not such a bad thing either. But the thing is – she didn’t see why we were doing it. I need to work on relevancy.

    So, how are you holding up this June? Any reflections on what you want to work on, what you want to leave behind, what keeps you excited about teaching at the end of the year?

    Here’s my reflection, what I want to keep in mind for the rest of this year and the years to come. My June in a sentence:


    Keeping it real and relevant while having fun, smiling, laughing, and making connections.

    ps – as always, comments will be held in moderation until next Sunday.

  • Spinning the positive

    Contemporary world issues has a negative focus. I’ve been asked why we need to learn/watch/read/talk about such depressing things. Tension, conflict, power struggles, disparity… those are some of the themes. What if I put a spin on them? Creative tension. Power to change. Collaboration. Instead of focusing on the problems, I want to focus on the cool things people are doing all over the world.

    Like this.

    As John Chu says in the intro, people are becoming their own heroes. Developing their own dances by borrowing and remixing from others around the world as they become available. Wild.

    Just a little something I’m thinking about. To be continued…

  • students are a lot more competent than we ever give them credit for

    “My personal belief is that students are a lot more competent than we ever give them credit for, and sometimes all we need is to do is get out of their way.”

    Ok, those are actually Paula White’s words but we share the same belief.

    I have always thought that students will rise to the bar we place for them. Last week we worked with all of our students around the issue of bullying and its mirror, being thoughtful, respectful, nice to each other. Later that same day I saw one of my students approach another, someone she never usually gives the time of day, “I just want to say hi. What’s up?” While we were filing out of an assembly (the assembly itself was pretty rocking – a presentation by Music With Meaning). I know that little outreach meant the world to the student on the receiving end. I was touched to no end.

    We are explicitly expecting kindness. They are rising to those expectations when we step out of their way and give them the space to do so.

    Thoughts?

  • Reflecting on light, warmth, and the words of Stuart McLean, Sherman Alexie

    The sky is staining light over the snow-covered fields surrounding my house. I love these quiet mornings. Perfect for reflecting on where I am.

    Later on today two old friends are coming over. The four of us will eat and laugh together. There is never enough eating and laughing with old friends.

    But that is later, right now… I feel content, with a slight backlight of worry to do with the usual money-type issues. I’m learning that owning a home in the winter is expensive. I managed to go through 800 litres of oil between Dec. 15 and Jan. 22. And it wasn’t that cold. The consequences are very romantic though, we’re turning down the furnace and lighting more fires to keep the house warm. This 100 year old house with the dirt-floored, stone-walled basement is not as well-insulated as a newer home might be. Still wouldn’t trade it in, just need to focus on old knowledge concerning the conserving of energy. Like the wood burning stove. And time spent in the arms of another.

    Some of that worry also has to do with my daily travels to work. I think, like my lesson with the furnace, I need to tone things down. Simplify. 130 kms/day is not simple. That would entail either my moving closer to work or finding work that is closer to me. To be continued…

    The content part has to do with the quiet of the morning. Keith in my life. The coming of the light – it comes earlier and stays later these days. My dogs chewing their bones on the carpet. Betty staring at them from her spot above the fridge, taking her space though safely out of reach. The fast crackle of the fire as the kindling does its magic, preparing for the slow heat of the day.

    It also has to do with words. I’m ever in awe of the power of words. Yesterday I laughed out loud to Dave’s plight with the treadmill, told so cleverly by Stuart McLean (January 30th, 2010 “Dave’s Shoelace”). Through the sharing of our stories, Stuart McLean reaches out to that which is common to so many people. Those stories about ourselves that you have to laugh to or else you just might cry. If you’ve never heard of The Vinyl Cafe, go give it a listen. The Vinyl Cafe podcasts automatically feed into my ipod as they are available. Or sometimes I wait for them to play on CBC radio 1, Saturdays or Sundays. I think they play on NPR as well.

    I’m just starting Sherman Alexie’s Indian Killer. Real words there. He does things differently than Stuart McLean, that’s for sure. Yet the last book I read of his, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, was also filled with stories that hold truth, that use humour to get at the essence of what makes us, us. Definitely closer to the painful side of the truth. The more uncomfortable side of the truth, yet with a glimpse of hope, a glimpse of the why. I know at least a few of my students have been drawn to that book, have read it voraciously during our daily reading periods, have snuck it into history or art class as well. Words that connect to teens as well as adults? Wow. Thank you Mr. Alexie.

    Have a wonderful Sunday everyone. Keep your eye on the growing light.