Purpose

Live Your Life on Purpose

            During the school day a teacher talks a lot about responsibility.  We ask the kids to be responsible in so many ways…from their desk to their behavior.  We are constantly reminding children to follow a direction and for me, I am constantly giving positive praise…because I think this is what really promotes good classroom management…praise, praise, praise.  But one of the things I say all the time is “Walk with a purpose…think about where you are going.  Today we are going to Art.  Are you ready?  What will you do there?  How should you enter the classroom?”  In the hallway…I’m giving them prompts to think about. 

            Now I should be asking the same question for myself.  As a teacher, we need to be ready.  Ready for what we think might happen because 9 times out of 10, something will come up that we never thought would happen.  From the good…like the time my husband sent me flowers ‘just because’ and I had to stop what I was doing, appreciate the moment, then somehow go back to teaching when all I wanted to do was call him and tell him how much I loved him, to the bad….we were on our way back from PEWE (we call it physical education/wellness education) and a boy threw up in the hallway…poor little guy… to the ugly….one year an administrator wanted to have copies of our (all of us on that grade level) lesson plans for the week and right in the middle of my teaching I had to stop, gather them and then continue.  Now it wasn’t so bad because yes, I had my lesson plans etc. but just stopping and wondering…did I do everything right was stressful and hard to get back into the mindset of teaching.

            Above all, it’s important to have your ‘big’ purpose in mind. What do I mean? Yesterday I talked about your teaching beliefs.  Those are your ‘big’ intentions….your ‘big’ purpose for your classroom.  And the good thing is that those things come naturally (most of the time haha)….because that is who you ARE.  One year I went to a workshop and another teacher said…quite randomly…you know we are on our personal email all day long.  Well...no, actually…I’m not.  Live your life on purpose, be aware of the now.  What is your purpose?  What does your day consists of?  I’d love for you to share.  Do you know what your purpose is?  Do you need help defining it?  I think it’s important to take time out to figure out your ‘little purposes’ like…’teach students to identify 3-dimensional shapes’ to your ‘big purposes’ like…what should my classroom look like.  How do you see this quote?  What does it make you think of?  Have a great Wednesday!

And check out this blog.  You can print out the quote for free and keep it wherever.  I like to keep mine by my desk.  Sarah Jane is amazingly creative.  She wrote something that I think is really good too…”Answers come while you are busy keeping your priorities.”  Brilliant.