“Those that have survived such perils of the sea as typhoons, suffocating red tides, and attacks from predators are brought ashore and opened. if everything has gone well, the result is a lovely, lustrous and very valuable pearl.” Click image for source.
Yesterday after work I was typing up a commitment contract with our head teacher, Lynn, for one of our students. We had had a day. I remarked that it’s like that in Alternative – each day is ‘a day’ – and that is what makes our jobs more interesting – every day is different and exciting.
We joked about that for a while and then I said but seriously, even though they can be trying in the moment, it’s responding to the varied situations and the behaviours/needs of our kids that makes me a better teacher. It’s on the job professional development. I feel I learn so much each day about relationship, caring, learning. Lynn responded – better teacher? It makes me a better person.
Thought that pearl was worth showing in the light.
4 Comments
It’s the oysters, not the pearls, that are discomforted, and that may be an even better analogy for teachers living on the edges.
(Do you know if the oyster meat is eaten once the pearl is removed? I am darkly amused by the idea that we throw away the part that’s useful to us–we’re all magpies.)
.-= Michael Doyle´s last blog ..Up, up, and away =-.
I like that analogy, Michael. I often think about teachers as containers. We hold emotion – stress, nervousness, fear, happiness, sadness, glee – for our students in our rooms so that learning can happen. We hold the environment, atmosphere, so that they can ripen, mature, grow.
I don’t know if the oyster meat is eaten… ugh, that image affects the analogy somewhat, doesn’t it :)
Hi Tracy….hope this finds you well and extremely well said and so true!!
SOMETIMES
Sometimes
if you move carefully
through the forest
breathing
like the ones
in the old stories
who could cross
a shimmering bed of dry leaves
without a sound,
you come
to a place
whose only task
is to trouble you
with tiny
but frightening requests
conceived out of nowhere
but in this place
beginning to lead everywhere.
Requests to stop what
you are doing right now,
and
to stop what you
are becoming
while you do it,
questions
that can make
or unmake
a life,
questions
that have patiently
waited for you,
questions
that have no right
to go away.
~ David Whyte ~
(Everything is Waiting for You)
You ask and follow very deep questions……
be well…mike
Thanks for the poem, Mike. We work with questions every day that have no right to go away, don’t we.