A Little Sunday Inspiration

We have a new superintendent this year. He sends us an email every morning with an educational quote, inspiring message, or interesting article. The following is one I saved. As I was cleaning my messages out, I came across it again and wanted to share it here. I was just going to share the quote he found, but decided to share the entire message because it was so well-written.

“The best teachers have the best students – every year.” –Todd Whitaker

 

We all know that each school year with new students that walk into our classrooms brings about a whole new set of challenges, joys, sorrows, and memories. No one year, classroom, or student is identical, but it’s our attitude that is most important in how we consistently deal with our students. The age-old question, “Is teaching an art, science, or craft?” comes to my mind today. Personally, I believe it is all three of those because teaching definitely requires strong content knowledge, a unique ability to relate and communicate to students that inspires them to master the subject matter, and a passion to become better at your skills/talents each and every day so students truly do observe you as a life-long learner and teacher. Have a great week of doing what you love!!

I think there's a lot of truth to the quote and what our superintendent wrote. It's easy to become discouraged (and we've all had those years!), but our attitude really does make a difference. I start every year by telling my students how lucky they are to be in the very best classroom-- ours! I remind them of this when it seems like we're having a hard time making good choices as a group. Students really do live up to our expectations.

Finally, this is completely unrelated but I had to let you know about it anyway. I was blogstalking Unless Teaching yesterday and found out about Symbaloo.com. It's a website that lets you program your bookmarks with unique colors and images to create a sort of game board. I started with Adrienne's, but then customized it for my kiddos. You can grab her board or mine to get started if you want. How cool is that?! I'm working on a reading board now and will post more about it when I have that ready, but when I find something this good I just have to share it right away so you can get to using it also!


PS- I'm writing a series here on my blog over the next six days. Here's a sneak preview video. If I get to 250 followers by the end of the series, there will be a $25 Amazon gift card giveaway to one of my followers so be sure to share my blog with your teacher friends!