Are you a preschool or primary level teacher?

Following David's premise that our work is a pilgrimage of identity, and knowing that the very best teachers at these levels intuitively establish full rapport with children by "matching" them in so many observable ways, then ...

...Do some newcomers to our field expect that teaching individuals at these levels will be easy? easier than middle school? easier than high school?

...Do some college students choose to study at our level because they expect that the "curriculum" is simply numbers and letters -not realizing that the curriculum includes careful activation and mindful regulation of all our emotional buttons? a deep knowledge of human resources, child psychology, child development, sociology, family systems, learning to learn and cultivating curiosity, problem solving, social skills, unique learning styles, and a lasting love of learning -despite multiple obstacles that will arise in home life, school life, and community life into the future?

...Do some "outsiders" -adults unaware of the skillfulness in our abiity to attune-confuse out attunement with weakness? or lower intelligence? or childishness?

...Do  some"outsiders" -like the general public, school board elected officials, ivory tower types, lawmakers - underestimate our insightfulness, capacity to engage lofty conversations about the nature of learning and the art of teaching? consider hard data? make unlikely resources work for the advantage of twenty highly differentiated and developing persons under in our care?

Stereotyping and prejudice filters perceptions.  Unchecked, it drives us to talk with a loud voice to any elderly person, or special needs person in a wheel chair!  Unchecked, we make unwarrented assumptions  -just because we have unconsciously learned to "associate" certain characteristics with particular genders, appearances, roles, stages, stations, locations, neighborhoods, nations, occupations, etc.

So let's hear it from the teachers of our very young...have you been mistaken as having a preschool mentality because you work well with this stage group? How do you know? What can we do to counteract this misperception?

How can we help address this issue effectively without eclipsing the immense value of our talents?

The WORK of Parents???

When we follow David Whyte's premise that the nature of the work we engage on a daily basis calls forth and develops characteristics, proclivities, talents, skills needed in order to become successful in that work, then parents will benefit from reading Gethin and Macgregor's treatise on bedtime parenting, HELPNG BABY SLEEP.

Next time you head to your neighborhood book store, or Borders or Barnes and Nobles, the following pages will help you survey the range of information reviewed and shared:
p. 53 The "Unfinished" Baby
p. 61 Help babies calm down when they feel stressed
p. 78 Why do experts recommend sleep training if it isn't safe?
p. 84 Sleep Training: Being out of attunement with your baby
p. 91 Risks of the Protest, Despair, Detachment Process (re hopelessness, helplessness research)
p. 95 The Good News (with suggested reading to support generating the repair process pp 197-200)
p. 105 Gentle Approaches to Help Your Baby Sleep (applies principles to range of ages and stages)
p. 133 Common Sleep Problems - and how to cope with them
p. 153 Responsive Parenting - six gifts you can  give your child (emotional skills of any caregiver... remember babies are not born with capacity to regulate or manage their emotions...the adults in their lives model, organize, and structure experiencs to make this learning possible or not)
p. 175 Taking Care of Yourself (trusting your instincts ... protecting your self from the local whirlpool of myths and bad advice ... sources that help traumatized parents heal from harsh birth experiences)

Merriam-Webster, an essential distinction:WORK? or JOB?

Google dictionary help for work.  Do the same for job.

As you go about your day, allow yourself to think about this essential difference.

Then, consider how we have allowed our industrial age fascination with the factory ... its parts machinery along with speed (and greed)... to infect our very concept of what it means to be human, to sustain ourselves in our natural environment.  Then extend your thinking to include the impact on our families, our schools, our marketplace, our cultures ... and our individual capacities to contribute in significant ways through accomplishment.

An important, indeed essential difference,  boils down to this: 

• a "job" indicates some aspect of the whole...a specific piece of the process or person's efforts, disconnected from the whole.
• in contrast, "work" is an entirely different ...holistic...concept.  In work, the whole process, the whole person matters. Our "work" allows us, even expects us to make a difference!  

NEA President, Education Secretary Talk School Reform

NEA President, Education Secretary Talk School Reform

Greetings Apprentice Teachers!

Grab a cup of beverage, two or three peers...find a place to unwind and talk during Saturday's Goodshop.

Remember using technology that plays your results forward enters your team in the weekly drawing for complementary dinner at The Columbia Club with Dr. Renard.

The PROMTS below follow in sets of three:

So what is it about perceptions of "a teacher's work" that differentiate between Lead/Master/Professing Teachers (category #1 )and Novice Teacher (category # 2) ? (Define Novice)

And let's clarify "work" perceptions that differentiate between Lead/Master/Professing Teachers and Underprepared Teachers? (Define Underprepared)

Suppose we identify "work" perceptions that differentiate between Lead/Master/Professing Teachers and Poorly Performing Teachers? (Define Poorly Performing)

How might we differentiate between Novice Teachers and Underprepared Teachers?

Are all ineffective teachers actually poorly performing, or simply underprepared in one or more ways?

Are some teachers ineffective because they are simply ill-suited to the nature of classroom teacher's work?

Do we know how "ill-suited" teachers matriculated through years of coursework, student taught/graduated, then were interviewed/employed by school districts?

Are we clear yet how ill-suited teachers actually "slip through the cracks" at each of these three successive stages?

How quickly do ill-suited teachers remove themselves from teaching? How do others remain? How does a typically tradtional school culture of isolation contribute?

Are some teachers ineffective because they are teaching in the complex system of a classroom -but would do well with small groups? - even shine in a certification area that draws on specific talents?

What proportion of Lead/Master/Professing Teachers (when they were 1st, 2nd, 3rd year novices) recall consciously behaving from the similarly rich framework that currently guides their "work"?

How did/do Lead/Master/Professing Teachers define the nature of their "work" early in careers? after five years? after ten years? after twenty? after thirty? then forty? even fifty?

Remember teachers may graduate to Lead role only after ten years, Master role only after twenty years, Professing role only after thirty years of performance (Reference: TeacherJourneyRubric.)

Which five different sources of data review (e.g. teacher interview, peer interviews, action observations, social history, PD Plan, academic background, personality profile, school records, professional references) do your Lead/Master/Professing Teachers identify as crucial when
predicting assignment success? 
evaluating professional status? 
designing a growth plan?
(Provide key details underlying choices in these three arenas.)

Dr. Rene Renard, Grand Council Professor of Career Development

Grand Council Summary

12/7/10 @ The Columbia Club

Manhattan

Work calls forth character-we can use it or lose it!

David refers to Doctor Lydgate's character development over time in George Elliot's Middlemarch: 


Lydgate with an original approach to medicine and a strong youthful idealism, but Eliot lays out the danger awaiting him from the very beginning of Lydgate's career. ...The story of their coming to be shapen after the average and fit to be packed by the gross,  is hardly ever told in their consciousness; for perhaps their ardour in generous unpaid toil cooled as imperceptibly as the ardour of other useful loves, till one day their earlier welf walked like a ghost in its old home ...(p.165-166)

When the place in which we work (even live, for some) makes less and less room for who we are, who we wish to become,  and the gifts we can readily share ... it is time to take oneself on a personal retreat.

1. Stop: Decide to make space and time to recover your well-being...an hour, a day, a week, five minutes is often enough to catch ourselves before we tumbling down that ole rabbit hole!
2. Drop: Go deep within to reconnect with what "sources" us ... fills our soul with enthusiasm, order, goodwill, stimulates our imagination
3. Roll: As we fill up again, we can notice that our imagination rekindles, our perspective clarifies leading to good judgment, wisdome redirects our initiatives and revises our intentions.
4. Set revisioned parameters that preserve and protect the good we are, the good we bring...
5. Firm boundaries between Self and places and spaces around us to enhance the possibilities that surrounding good can come through us!  
6. Without healthy skin, we do not live long on Planet Earth.  Strong and sustainable emotional/spiritual skin also begs daily cultivation -sometimes hourly... the regularity depends upon our the nature and quality of our home situation, our workplace conditions.
7. Like Smokey the Bear ... only we can prevent "forest fires" in our homelife, in our worklife.   Songwriters Arlen and Mercer help us with this catchy tune from the fifties: "You gotta accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch on to the affirmative, don't mess with Mister In Between..."
8. Let the muse be your guide as you co-create a better order that sustains healthy relationships among those with whom we live and work.