Infographic number 2, based on the workshop I attended at the NZPF Conference, run by Richard Gerver. You can find part 1, ‘On What Students Need’, here.
Education is the kind of profession, in my opinion, where all teachers enter with the distinct belief and desire that they are there to make a difference. I have never met a teacher who started their career thinking otherwise.
Teachers, in my experience, can however lose that passion and desire. I am pretty confident that they would never have wanted to have turned into ‘that teacher’. The one that turns up each day sour, grumpy and jaded. The kind of teacher that makes for a good character in a fictional story about schools that persecute its students. I wonder sometimes if they know that this is the teacher that they have become.
Richard asked the question, ‘where does the passion go?’ For all of us in Education, and especially leadership, its a really important question to reflect upon. Not only do we not want to become ‘that teacher or leader’ ourselves, but its important that if one of our colleagues is in that situation that we look to ask ourselves why, and how can we help them find their way back.
A teacher who has lost their way is no different to one of our students who may have lost the magic of learning. Ask yourself, what would you do to reignite the passion for learning in a student, and apply the same logic to a colleague. None of us would ‘write off’ a student so why would we not try to help our colleagues rediscover their passion.
The following infographic is based on some of the things Richard discussed during the conference, alongside some of the questions my colleagues and I pondered in discussion afterward. If all it does is generate some discussion and perhaps reframe they way we think, then as a profession we are making inroads into reigniting the passion for education.
In the words of my ten year old Squirt, ‘nothing is ever too late’.