Emails like this are the reason this site exists.

I am an 11-year high school English teaching veteran in the Los Angeles area. Most of my teaching was done in the trenches of suburban, low-SES “nay-bah-HOODS” and the fringes of, um, gangsta lands. (I teach English … go figure.) I’ve had my share of awesome kids, classes and experiences, and I’ve had my share of kids who practice “learned helplessness” and come to school looking like Snoop Droopy Drawers. Overall, I love my subject matter, and love working with high school age kids, especially helping them to “read, write and think your world” (one of my class mottoes).

I wanted to thank you for your no-nonsense, honest site that both cuts to the chase about teaching and encourages (us) to stay the course. I remember stumbling upon your site awhile back during a particularly long, rough period of teaching – you know, that no matter what techniques or strategies you try, or how many parent phone calls or detention slips you do, the kids choose to be vicious to the last day. Your tips and insight, especially the reasons to quit teaching and the reasons to stay in education, gave me the perspective I needed to get right back to work and be with my kids. I was also thrilled to read about how you were able to gain classroom control and your band kids’ respect right after Spring Break. Way to go!

What really impressed me as I reviewed your site this evening is that you are a Christian, too. Praise God! The kids need to have excellent teachers who are also strong spiritual influences – and how cool that you get to use music as that bridge. Are your students too young to appreciate musicians such as Ashley Cleveland, one of the best Christian musicians around? (I wonder what the music would sound like if she, Keith Green and Larry Norman could jam together?)

[snip]

Thanks again for your great site. Thanks for making music matter to students. And thanks for staying the teaching course, and sharing your great example with the rest of the online teacher brigade. May your last days of the school year be as stress free as possible! I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Not all of the emails are friendly
I occasionally get emails or comments that are negative. Telling me that I don’t know what I’m talking about or blaming administrators for the problems in education or whatever. My basic response to the trolls/obnoxious jerks/dirtbags/haters/whatever is to not respond.

I’ve learned that you will never make everyone happy until you stop doing things. But then, what’s the point?

The two articles that seem to strike the sorest nerve with readers are three of the earliest ones I wrote, back when I was trying to ruffle feathers a little bit to get noticed. They are 9 Reasons To Quit Teaching (And 10 Reasons To Stick), Valid Reasons Teachers Quit, and Invalid Reasons Teachers Quit.

The latter two seem to incite the most incendiary responses, and so next week we will revist these articles three years later.

Oh yeah, in case you want to know what I removed from the email above, she asked for suggestions on possibly moving from California to teach in Texas. If you want to help her out some there too, I’m sure it would be appreciated!

If I may, I would like to get your perspective on the current teaching climate in Texas. I’ve been seriously considering moving out of state in order to stay in the teaching profession. The last couple of years in CA have been particularly cruel on English teachers (as well as nationwide). Fair to say that burnout has set in, especially with what administrators and state “school experts” are doing in the districts, but the desire to remain in the classroom and be a positive influence on teenagers has not gone away. Maybe it’s time for a change of location. I’ve been reviewing TX ISD sites throughout the state to get a feel for the schools and their expectations. Are there particular issues that TX is facing with budget cuts that are forcing schools to take strong measures ( increase class sizes, make staff take unpaid furlough days)? Also, what would be the most effective way to approach school districts about openings, especially someone from out of state who’s had to eat, breathe, sleep and pray teaching standards that rival Texas’? Since all of my experience is from metropolitan/suburban areas, I would probably focus my search to major cities. But I’m open to looking at other options as well. If I did make the bold move, my top priority would be to make sure here’s a biblically strong church nearby.

Please know that I’m not trying to brownnose for teaching positions. But I am looking at options. Any advice or insight that you are open to passing on down is greatly appreciated. If you have questions about who I am, want to know more about my teaching, etc., I am happy to answer.

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I ran 1 mile last night and it took me 18:45. I saw a post on the Couch To 5K’s Facebook profile the other day that questioned whether someone made a typo when they said they ran a mile in 33 minutes.

They couldn’t imagine someone only running one mile in 33 minutes. My contribution to that discussion was pretty good, so I posted it on the Can Wii Do It? blog this evening.

Enjoy The Art of Slow Slow Slow Running…

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Are you at the bottom of a pit? Maybe you’re in a place you never thought you would be. Or you never thought you’d be there again. I can’t count the number of times I’ve fallen into a bad habit in teaching. I allow myself to get bogged down with paperwork instead of taking care of it right away. Students ask me questions at the beginning of class and I forget the six magic words that liberate me: “I’m not answering questions right now.”

Oh, you’ve done it too…

Positive changes come and go like the wind most of the time. How do we stick it out and truly persevere? If you know the answer to this question, write a book and make millions. It seems everyone who thinks they might have a clue has already written a book about it. And the world continues setting goals and failing.

The only key I have found has been simply diligence. The Free Dictionary defines diligence thusly:

1. Earnest and persistent application to an undertaking; steady effort; assiduity.
2. Attentive care; heedfulness.

I prefer the simpler “discipline multiplied by time.” I think how to fail gracefully is one of the greatest lessons we can learn and more importantly as teachers, one of the greatest lessons we can transfer to our students.

Along these lines, Keith Green wrote:

He’s brought me here, where things are clear
And trials turn to gold
He shared with me, His victory
He won in days of old

Oh Lord, I don’t deserve
The riches of your word
But You’ve changed my filthy rags
To linen white as snow

The view from here is nothing near
To what it is for You
I tried to see Your plan for me
But I only acted like I knew

Oh Lord forgive the times
I tried to read your mind
Cause you said if I’d be still
Then I would hear your voice

My Lord, my King, my urge to sing
And praise the things above
No words can say the glorious way
You changed me with your love

He’s brought me low, so I could know
The way to reach the heights
To forsake my dreams, my self esteem
And give up all my rights

With each one that I lay down
A jewel’s placed in my crown
Cause His love, the things above
Is all we’ll ever need

He’s brought me here, where things are clear
And trials turn to gold

The thing that got me thinking along these lines was actually that I downloaded a recent TED Talk by Aimee Mullins entitled The opportunity of adversity. In it she says, “unless told otherwise…if left to their own devices, a child will achieve.”

How powerful is that? How often do we take a child’s diagnosis and assume that means they are going to act or think a certain way? How often do we — consciously or unconsciously — reinforce those stereotypes? I’m sure I’m the only one who might possibly remotely come close to doing anything like that…or not! She concludes the talk:

“I think that the only true disability is a crushed spirit. A spirit that’s been crushed doesn’t have hope, it doesn’t see beauty, it no longer has our natural childlike curiosity and our innate ability to imagine. If instead, we can bolster a human spirit to keep hope, to see beauty in themselves and others, to be curious and imaginative, then we are truly using our power well. When a spirit has those qualities, we are able to create new realities and new ways of being.”

Here’s the entire video:

Oh yeah, did I mention she had both of her legs amputated when she was one-year old?

While we’re on the topic of TED Talks about adversity, you’ve got to watch this video of deaf percussionist Evelyn Glennie explaining how to listen. Amazing stuff!

Embrace the trial. Learn from the experience. Go for the gold!

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Look around you. How many unrealized plans do you see? How much unfinished business do you have sitting on your desk at work waiting for you in the morning? What about ungraded papers, unread emails, un-thrown-away junk mail?

Maybe paperwork isn’t your problem. Maybe it’s a half-finished basement, a bathroom renovation gone sour, a fence in the back yard that needs to be adjusted. Or you have bill collectors hounding you. Or you aren’t contributing enough (or anything) to your retirement plan. Or you are in debt out your eyeballs. Or you’re still lugging around that extra 5 pounds that you’ve been meaning to lose (or the 75 pounds that has grown as you’ve been ignoring it for the last decade).

Whatever the case, we all have unfinished business in our lives. These things can cause incredible amounts of stress when we think about them. They can cause even more when we ignore them for a while hoping they’ll go away. But they rarely do.

Here’s the secret
You won’t change a thing in your life until you finally decide that you’re disgusted with living the way you have been living.

Most plans go unfinished simply because they are good ideas, perhaps even great ideas, but they aren’t all-encompassing ideas. By that I mean, we don’t develop the intense focus needed to accomplish them.

This goes back to the concept of planned neglect that I mentioned a few weeks ago. If we really want to change something, we’re going to have to give it solitary focus for an extended period of time. This is the psychology behind Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover plan (watch the videos for more info).

Having said this, there are a couple of things that we can do to help lower the stress in our lives.

1. Find a source of stress and beat it into submission
   Figure out one thing that brings most stress in your life. If it’s a relationship, work on addressing the problems that are going there. If it’s financial, focus all of your effort onto one financial goal at a time. If it’s a project, just decide to make it happen immediately. Spend a month or two developing one habit that will get you moving into the right direction. As you focus on one thing, other problems will become evident and your passion and focus will help you to overcome those in the process. But don’t get sidetracked! Stay on target.
2. Resolve to ignore the problem
   This is the other choice. If it’s not something illegal, immoral, or unhealthy, just accept it. If it’s something you want to eventually get through, then put some steps into place to gradually get over it, but sometimes there is beauty in just flat out accepting your own imperfections and moving on. It may be something you accept now but in a year or two or six you’ll be at a point where addressing the problem is easier and more reasonable.

I have a few unfinished series of articles on this blog that I started but for one reason or another I gave up on. This year, I will go back and finish some of them. If I don’t finish them all, I’ll live. So will you. If I do finish them, great! For now, I’m simply not going to worry about them.

For me, my focus point right now is exercise (specifically, training to run a 5K). Do you have one yet? If not, what are you waiting for? Tweet or blog about it and let people know.

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Since I have decided this new year to slowly end my hatred of running that I have harbored for the past decade or so, I’m reading more about it. I am inspired to find there are a handful of pretty good health and fitness blogs that my school hasn’t blocked on the network yet too! My conference period can now be spent walking, reading, or actually doing productive things for my band!

Today I have been catching up on some of the Twitter links I’ve seen and came across 13 Most Inspirational YouTube Videos of All-Time that Angela Maiers had sent out a few days back. I was really impressed by this video.

I was so impressed that I decided to dig in and see what more I could find from him. I came across an interview he did following the release of I Am Legend (Will Smith Walks Alone in I Am Legend). Below are three excerpts from the interview:

Smith on the discipline of losing twenty pounds for the role
“For me, the important part of that, and what we determined from our research, is that eating becomes something you do because you have to. There is no pleasure, there is no desire to eat, you just know your brain won’t function if you don’t. So losing weight and then the working out being part of the regimen you have to do – but for me I have a much easier time losing weight than putting weight on. Ali was fifty times harder trying to put weight on than to drop. If you run thirty miles a week and do five miles six days a week, your body will look like whatever you want it to look like.”

Will Smith on whether he has a positive attitude towards life
“Yes, absolutely. I feel very, very confident that the keys to life for me are reading and running. The idea that there are millions and billions of people who have lived before us, and they had problems and they solved them and they wrote it in a book somewhere – there is no new problem that we can have that we have to figure out by ourselves. There’s no relationship issue, there is no issue with your parents or your brother or your government, there is no issue we can have that somebody didn’t already write a thousand years ago in a book. So, for me, that concept of reading is bittersweet because you know it’s in a book somewhere but you’ve got to find the right one that is going to give you the proper information. I said reading and running and the running aspect is how can you connect with your weakness. When you get on the treadmill you deprive yourself of oxygen. What kind of person you are will come out very, very quickly. You’re either the type of person who will say you’re going to run three miles or you stop the treadmill at 2.94 and you hit it and you call 2.94 3 miles, or you get off after a mile, or you’re the type of person that runs hard through the finish line and when you get to 3.0 you realize, ‘God, I could really do 5,’ and you go ahead and do two more. And that little person talks to you and says, ‘Man, do you feel our knee? We should stop. I feel we should stop ourselves right now. This is not healthy anymore.’ When you learn to get command over that person on that treadmill, you learn to get command over that person in your life. That’s the same person that tells you, ‘Man, that girl’s got some big breasts. Listen, we don’t have to do nothing, let’s just go the hotel room together.’ That’s the same person. Getting command of that person has been really important.”

On where his confidence originates from
“There is a very central idea in my life. My grandmother just thought I was the greatest. She always had us always playing piano and having us do recitations at church and all of that. She always kept us in the shows at church and there was a look of pride that my grandmother have in her eyes that became the fuel that I need in life. I need my woman and daughter and mother and women in general to look at me with that look that my grandmother had. I was about 15 years old when my first girlfriend cheated on me. It so destroyed my concept of cause and effect, that you can be good and good stuff happens, and when you’re bad, bad stuff happens. I processed why she cheated on me was I wasn’t good enough, and I made a decision in my bed that I would never not be good enough again. That was the last time in my life that I would not be good enough. In that bizarre hurt 15-year-old mind then nobody would hurt me or cheat on me if I’m good enough. I may have gone a little overboard on it but every single day Jada has to have that look. I can’t function if she doesn’t have that look in her eyes. That means with the movies, as a husband, as a father, everything I do in life I educate myself to the place that I can contend with the best on Earth and that’s the only way to keep my woman from leaving me.”

Be inspired, stick with your goals, and don’t end 2010 the same way you started it!

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So I’m curious…how is your plan going so far? We are one week into 2010 now. Did you come up with a New Year’s Resolution this year? How has it fared in the first seven days of the year? Does it have hope for lasting much longer? I’d love to hear your goals and their progress. Also, if you’ve done something truly remarkable in the past, share that in the comments. Or tweet about it. Success stories have this knack for motivating other people. And sometimes we just need a little motivation. So go for it, brag about your accomplishments. Or your vision.

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In the past I’ve come up with New Year’s Resolutions, and more recently Visions for the Year. They sort of helped to guide the first four to six weeks of the year, but rarely have lasted much beyond that. This year is different. This year I’m for real. I’ve decided to create a BHAG – a Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal – for myself. I am making active steps in moving forward on the goal, and I am setting myself up to either win big or fail big. It will not be a quiet ending, whichever way things pan out.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. The first thing I’ll do is go over the basics of goal-setting, and then give an example of my current BHAG.

Specific
Most goals tend to come in an open-ended form such as “I want to lose weight” but don’t include any specifics about the goal. What can you do with “I will exercise more and eat less” if you don’t have specific data with which to compare? If I say that I’m going to eat less, I need to know what eating less looks like. Maybe I’ll lower my monthly food budget, or make it a goal to leave food on the plate every time I eat.

Realistic
I may realize that I need to lose over 100 pounds for the Wii Fit guy to say that I’m healthy, but if I set a goal of losing 100 pounds this year, that’s fairly unrealistic. Oh sure it can be done, but it’s atypical, and the chance of me maintaining a weight-loss rate of 8 1/3 pounds a month for an entire year is pretty minimal. Especially given my past track record. But 60 pounds is a bit more reasonable. 5 pounds a month on average means that I can have a wild month where I lose 9 and another in which I lose 1 and still be on track.

Measurable
An effective goal must be measurable. If I set a goal to eat 50 Twinkies, but don’t set a target time for such eating to be done, then there is no clear motivation to get the goal started and finished. If I say I’m going to eat 50 Twinkies in 20 minutes, then I can sit down and figure out that I’ll have to consume 2.5 Twinkies every minute, or one every 24 seconds. This gives me a target rate for accomplishing the goal, and allows me to adjust within the time-frame to figure out if I need to speed up or even if I can slow down the pace a little bit.

Public
A goal that isn’t codified in writing is merely wishful thinking. Write it down. Blog about it. Tell your friends, family, enemies, students, pets, pastor, rabbi, hairstylist, pizza delivery boy, grandmother, whoever you can about it. Tweet about it. Facebook links relating to it. Go public and go big.

How my goal follows this pattern
So this Sunday, the sermon in church was based on Philippians 3:13,14:

Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

So after some deep meditation, I decided that it’s time for me to return to my early college healthy lifestyle. So I have two specific goals that I have set for myself:

1. Run a 5K (3.1 miles) in April
2. Weigh under 200 pounds by 2011

These goals are specific, reasonable (albeit clearly they will take intense effort and focus), measurable, and public. I’m telling my running friends about my 5K plans. I’m blogging about it here, as well as on another blog. I’m posting Twitter and Facebook status updates about my workouts and goals.

What about you? What are your goals for the new year?

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No Rights Reserved

I got an email from a reader this morning and she sent told me that I might appreciate her latest blog post. She writes:

I read your blog.  I also write my own blog.  I started my blog when I wanted to quit.  I spent about a year thinking about that.  I realize now that I don’t want to quit anymore.  I thought maybe my latest blog about why I don’t want to quit anymore would be of interest to you or your readers.

So I jumped on over to check it out. What an inspiration it was, too! Her blog Teacher, I Don’t Get It has been up for a little less than a year. I was indeed impressed by her latest post, Hope and the Difficult Journey. In it, she briefly summarizes her first twenty-five months of teaching and outlines how she has hope for the future now and doesn’t want to quit. What I like about it is how she lists some of the things that have really helped her cope with the situation.

1. Don’t give up, even when you feel absolutely useless. We all feel that way at times.
2. Surround yourself with positive people.
3. Avoid negativity like the plague.
4. Learn something from everyone with whom you come into contact.
5. Enjoy the journey.

I really think you should check her blog out. It will brighten your day!

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This is a guest post by Tom Anselm. His book, You’re Never Too Old For Space Camp is available in Ebook or Paperback formats from Booklocker.com.

 

“My kids go to a good school”
What parent doesn’t want to be able to say this about the bricks and mortar location where they entrust their offspring for 7 hours a day, 180 days a year, again and again.

And for that matter, what teacher worth his or her salt doesn’t want to be able to say with some conviction, “Yeah, I work in a good school.”

This word “good” when used in the context of quality holds so much meaning. It brings us to the question of this article. “What is a Good School?”

I have been in this game in various capacities since the early 1970’s. I’ve had the great good fortune to have taught in institutions for developmentally disabled people, in a juvenile court learning environment and most recently in the traditional public education experience. I’ve seen a lot, heard a lot, and have lived to tell about it. But the observations to follow are not exclusively my own. Nor do I claim to have any expertise in this field. Everyone who’s ever worked in a school or been to a school (and that pretty much covers most of us) has their own idea of what makes up a good school.

So, in no particular order, here is what I have come to believe.

A Good School has clear and positive leadership
In any organization having a truly great leader is a rare treat. Education is no exception. In our world, it’s the principal and her assistants whose job it is to set the tone and direction for any school year. Almost without exception, they were once toiling in the classroom, and for one reason or another, they’ve gotten their papers and credentials and moved into the front office. The good ones share a few common traits. First and foremost, they are fair and honest with their staff. Nothing ruins a building’s climate like a boss who can’t be trusted. They also need to never forget where they came from, especially when expecting the teachers to take on one more “new and innovative program that is taking the country by storm.”

The absolutely positively must be visible. In the halls, at lunch, at the concerts, games and dances. The guy who hides behind his secretary is the guy who has lost his school.

I’ve had bosses for whom I’d run through the gym divider, and others for whom I wouldn’t cross the parking lot. Believe me, it’s a lot easier on those days when you just don’t feel like rolling out of the sack to make the push if you work for the likes of the former.

There are the unofficial leaders in a good school as well. We see them in the coach who makes about 37 cents per hour, but will stay behind to help the kid who just can’t get that jump shot down. We find her in the quiet, unassuming sponsor of the club to help girls learn how to be a woman, or the cheerleading moderator, or the art teacher who leads the school in a fundraising drive to provide water to villages in war-torn Africa. We find them in the new teacher whose enthusiasm is as contagious as pink eye in a kindergarten classroom, or the veteran who is able to impart a sense of calm to a harried department chair. These are the people who embody the quote from a novel called “The Little Prince”: What is essential is invisible to the eye.

A Good School must have these leaders, formal and informal. They together produce the positive culture of an organization whose sole reason for existence is to build new generations.

A Good School must be safe
In today’s world, we cannot place too high a value on the physical and emotional well-being of our kids. Sure, all schools must have policies and procedures for safety measures. And more and more of them are keeping their doors locked. But the Good School practices being safe, and keeps that in mind day to day.

As a teacher, I know I appreciate somebody looking out for me.

A corollary of this safety issue goes hand-in-hand with the previous discussion of administrators. “You can’t let the inmates run the asylum”, is a commonly heard dictum, and never is it more true than in a school. We are entrusted with all manner of individual, and given the law of averages, not all of them are sugar and spice. A Good School deals fairly and consistently with those who choose not to play the game by the rules. There are few things worse for a teacher’s morale than no one “having your back” when it comes to discipline.

A Good School is clean
Especially the bathrooms. For that give credit to the unsung heroes of the hallways, the custodians. They fight the never-ending battle for truth, justice and a litter-free environment against insurmountable odds. Whether it be a brand-spanking new facility, or one that seemingly is being held together with duct tape and a prayer, a body can sure tell a lot about a place by how it looks.

A Good School values its “newbies”
A lot has been written about how our colleges train students for 4 years and then our profession loses 50% of them within the first five years of their careers. Some studies indicate that some 30% of those who leave find their way back to education. The job has that strong a pull. However, the Good School looks out for its New Kids on the Hallway. This goes beyond a district’s formal mentoring or academy programs. It can be as simple as someone inviting them to sit with them at lunch, or encouraging them to sponsor a club, or just being there to listen to them as they wonder if they can make it through the toughest year of their lives. Our profession needs this infusion of their youth and excitement, and a Good School recognizes this.

A Good School values its “elders”
Being one, I can relate. We old folks have been there and done that, year after year, and despite less hair or a slower pace going down to the teachers lounge, we have something valuable to share about how to survive in our native land. And with that comes a responsibility for the veteran to avoid being jaded. Reality is one thing, but pessimism never helped a person just starting out in their chosen field. A school that can blend its old with its new is all the stronger in the struggle. We must work together, sports fans. Let’s face it — everyday we come to work we are vastly outnumbered.

A Good School doesn’t lose sight of the forest for all the trees of statistics and state test scores and walk-throughs by yet another agency and surveys and assessments.

Of course, our business is to impart knowledge and sound curriculum and methods is a given. However, none other than Albert Einstein said “Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted.” Our product is for the most part invisible. One social studies teacher I know said very simply “I don’t teach history… I teach the future.” I’ve also heard that “All children are gifted. Some of them just open their presents later than others.”
There is the story of the high school student who was what could be called a loner. One day, he and a teacher passed in the hallway. No one was there but these two. The boy happened to look up and the teacher stopped, smiled and said “Good Morning. How are you today?” He didn’t respond, and they continued on their separate ways.

A year later they met again. The boy was working at a grocery store, gathering carts, and stopped the teacher in the parking lot.

“You don’t remember me, probably, but you know last year when you said ‘good morning’ to me in the hall way? Well, I was going to kill myself that night.”

The teacher was unable to speak. The boy smiled warmly. “As you can see, I didn’t.” He paused. “Thanks, Mrs. Tanner.”

So as former St. Louis Cardinal pitcher Joaquin Andujar said, when asked to describe baseball in one word, “Youneverknow.” You really never know what one word can do to change a life. And we as teachers have so many opportunities to say that one word, day after day.

A Good School has tons of Mrs. Tanner’s
If all the above comes together, you just might have a Good School. If you work in one, stay as long as they let you. If you don’t, then find one and get in there as fast as possible.

A mom summed it up for me a few years ago.

“What is a good school? Well, to me, a good school is a place where every kid can’t wait to get there in the morning, ’cause maybe that is the day she gets to be ‘Teacher’s Pet.’”

(Missouri National Education Association, “Something Better”quarterly magazine, Summer, 2009)

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This is an article in the Total Teacher Transformation series. Click here for a complete table of contents.

As discussed last time, part of gaining respect from students comes from being respectful. The second element of earning the respect of your students (and their parents), comes from being respectable. No amount of courtesy to your students can overcome a disrespectable personality!

So what are some character traits we should be modeling?
Competence - Knowing your content area is vital. If you are a band director, you need to have some sort of clue how to play an instrument. If you are an English teacher, you ought to be reading regularly. If you are a history teacher, you should have some sort of historical understand.

Poise – When you are talking, slow things down. You don’t need to be in a hurry all the time. The more relaxed you are, the more control you feel in the given situation. The more control you feel, the more control you will ultimately have.

Passion – Love your subject matter. It’s that simple. If you do, then it will show itself in your teaching. Your students will come to love the same things you do (even middle school kids)! If you are stuck in a job, it will become quite evident to the students as well. Don’t let it happen. Make whatever changes are necessary, but don’t allow yourself to stay in a setting you can’t stand.

Care – If you have the three above, and don’t care about teaching students, it simply will not work. If you care about the children, then the above three will begin to fall into place. This is really where it all becomes real. They won’t care what you know until they know that you care. Cheesy, trite, perhaps. But it’s still pretty much dead on also.

Today’s assignment
Find some ways you can personally be more respectable. Watch others you know whom you deeply respect and try to figure out why it is that you respect those people. Try to emulate some of those characteristics and apply them directly to your teaching.

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Find A Mentor – Again (Total Teacher Transformation Day 6)

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Find A Motivator (Total Teacher Transformation Day 5)

Be Consistent (Total Teacher Transformation Day 9)

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