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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Bildung
- Sprache: Englisch
Stay engaged with your purpose to better serve your students--and yourself In an era of sky-high burnout, Educating with Passion and Purpose gives veteran educators everything they need to thrive in their profession. This book will help you avoid the disenchantment and frustration that can come from doing the difficult work of K-12 education. You are in this field because you want to make a difference, but you often lack the support you need to do that amid overwhelming demands. Experienced educators themselves, authors Meredith Matson and Rebekah Shoaf speak the truth about what today's teachers confront--and how you can navigate the changing landscape to face the challenges and opportunities we encounter. Inside, you'll find frequent opportunities for self-reflection on the topics that matter most to educators, including race, privilege, wellbeing, mentorship, and how to rise to the social-emotional demands that teaching asks. At a time when many teachers are leaving the field within the first years of their careers, Educating with Passion and Purpose offers you a way forward, so you can nurture your students and professional self. * Gain perspective on why you teach and what matters most to you in your career * Explore how race and identity impact interactions in your classroom * Learn practical strategies for protecting your social and emotional energy and seeking help * Find a new sense of inspiration in your teaching practice with hands-on activities and tools This book is perfect for educators with three or more years of experience. It also offers crucial insights for pre-service educators, staff developers, and experienced teachers looking for ways to avoid career burnout and other pitfalls traditional teacher-training programs did not prepare them.
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Seitenzahl: 331
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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Table of Contents
Cover
Praise for
Educating with Passion and Purpose
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction
Why We Wrote This Book
Who This Book Is For
How to Use This Book
Why Reflection Matters
Chapter 1: Finding Your Purpose
Meredith's Turn
Rebekah's Turn
Your Turn
Additional Considerations for Leaders
Note
Chapter 2: Purpose and Burnout
Meredith's Turn
Rebekah's Turn
Your Turn
Additional Considerations for Leaders
Notes
Chapter 3: What You Teach
Meredith's Turn
Rebekah's Turn
Your Turn
Additional Considerations for Leaders
Note
Chapter 4: How You Teach
Meredith's Turn
Rebekah's Turn
Your Turn
Additional Considerations for Leaders
Notes
Chapter 5: Being the Lead Learner
Meredith's Turn
Rebekah's Turn
Your Turn
Additional Considerations for Leaders
Notes
Chapter 6: Finding Your Professional Home
Meredith's Turn
Rebekah's Turn
Your Turn
Additional Considerations for Leaders
Chapter 7: Nourishing Your Network
Meredith's Turn
Rebekah's Turn
Your Turn
Additional Considerations for Leaders
Notes
Conclusion
Meredith's Turn
Rebekah's Turn
Your Turn
Appendix: Reproducibles
Beginning of the Year Teacher Reflection Tool
Burnout Self‐Assessment Checklist
The Burnout Spectrum
Connecting Schoolwide Policies to Your Purpose
Excavating Your
Why
Reflection Tool
Fire Visualization Tool
The Five Whys
The Five Whys: Example
Intentional Summer Planning Protocol
Job Search Preparation Tool
Mentor Matching and Reflection Tool
Modifying for Misalignment Tool
Network Reflection Tool
Planning Tool for a Sustainable Hiring Process
Preparing for Conversations about Equity
Professional Learning Reflection Tool
Purposeful Planning Tool for Professional Learning
Purposeful Planning Tool for Units and Lessons
Reflection Tool on Community Spaces for Collaboration
Reflection Tool for Burnout Factors
Reflection Tool for Designing Classroom Systems
Sample Student Feedback Survey
Staff Member Community Involvement Survey
Teacher‐Led Inquiry Cycle for Professional Development
Time Management Tool
Notes
Acknowledgments
Meredith's Turn
Rebekah's Turn
Our Turn
About the Authors
Index
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover Page
Praise for Educating with Passion and Purpose
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
Conclusion
Appendix Reproducibles
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
Index
Wiley End User License Agreement
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Praise for Educating with Passion and Purpose
“Educating with Passion and Purpose is a useful new companion to resources on teacher wellness. The authors' personal stories are relatable and will provide insight for readers into their own desires to contribute meaningfully to education.”
—Elena Aguilar, author of Onward: Cultivating Emotional Resilience in Educators
“For nearly 15 years I've learned alongside Meredith and Rebekah, and I continue to learn from them through the pages of this book. They interweave their personal journeys with practical tips for educators in a way that truly gets to the heart of the matter: it's all about purpose. Teacher educators, teachers, and school leaders alike will identify, reflect, and improve their practice by engaging with the personal stories and reflective prompts in this book.”
—Kristen Hawley Turner, PhD, Professor and Director of Teacher Education, Drew University
“This book is truly an inspiration to anyone fortunate enough to read it. The insightful advice, relatable experiences shared, and the encouragement and resources offered to overcome obstacles make it applicable and useful for all educators—at any level in their careers. Through tears, smiles, and head nods in agreement, there is no doubt that this book will help unlock your ‘why’ and motivate you to grow as an educator.”
—Shelby Sprung, Special education teacher, P94m
“Teachers, leaders, and anyone who works in education will benefit from Educating with Passion and Purpose: Keep the Fire Going without Burning Out. The stories, wisdom, and reflective activities will support educators to sustain and evolve throughout their career.”
—Alexis Goldberg, Managing Director of School Support, The Urban Assembly
“Reading Meredith's and Rebekah's stories reminded me not only of what I loved about learning in the classroom everyday with students, but also that this daily work is something I believe to be sacrosanct and the leader's duty to support and protect. When you are a district leader, it's easy to get caught up in the daily political and operational work that doesn't feel quite so sacred; reading their powerful narratives has inspired me to reconnect to my ‘why’ and to try and ground my daily work more explicitly with it in mind. This book could not have come at a better time.”
—Carolyn Yaffe, Executive Director of Valley Charter Schools, California
“With the engaging voices of experienced teachers and leaders, the authors provide an insightful and pragmatic guide for educators who are questioning their purpose or facing burnout.”
—Marshall A. George, Olshan Professor of Clinical Practice at Hunter College of the City University of New York
“Rebekah and Meredith provide a candid look at preventing and healing from teacher burnout and do so through personal storytelling that will draw you in in a deeply captivating way and will provide current and future educators with specific and equitable strategies to combat a very real problem in our field. Educators at all levels should pick up this book and learn from the infinite wisdom!”
—Carlos Beato, EdD, Co‐Director of Next Generation Learning Challenges
“In the midst of a national teacher shortage, Matson and Shoaf provide a critical contribution to the discussion about how we retain, sustain, and reinvigorate educators—by reconnecting with their purpose! Educators from the district office to the classroom should take note of these practical ideas for transforming experience and avoiding burnout.”
—Jeffrey Garrett, Founder of JM Garrett Learning Group and Senior Vice President of Leadership Development, Partnership for Los Angeles Schools
“In Educating with Passion and Purpose, Matson and Shoaf combine their extensive experience to create an invaluable resource for teachers and the leaders who support them. This book combines the power of personal narrative with practical reflection exercises and resources to help teachers build careers, curriculums, and communities grounded in purpose and filled with passion.”
—Ivelisse Ramos Brannon, Former high school English teacher, Curricular consultant, and PhD student at Harvard University
“A thoughtful, heartfelt, and comprehensive guide—I'll be giving to every teacher I know.”
—Jessica Murnane, author of One Part Plant and Know Your Endo
“With compelling personal narratives and a plethora of practical suggestions, these veteran teacher‐leaders provide educators at all levels practical and valuable examples of how to maintain energy and commitment in the classroom. Given the post‐COVID education landscape, this book is required reading for everyone working in schools.”
—Bil Johnson, Retired public school teacher educator and author of The Student‐Centered Classroom Handbook and Right Time, Right Places
Educating with Passion and Purpose
Keep the Fire Going without Burning Out
Meredith Matson
Rebekah Shoaf
Copyright © 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
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Printed in the United States of AmericaPublished simultaneously in Canada
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Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data
Names: Matson, Meredith, author. | Shoaf, Rebekah, author.
Title: Educating with passion and purpose : keep the fire going without burning out / Meredith Matson, Rebekah Shoaf.
Description: Hoboken, NJ : Jossey‐Bass, 2023. | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2023007772 (print) | LCCN 2023007773 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119893615 (paperback) | ISBN 9781119893622 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781119893639 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Teaching‐‐Psychological aspects. | Teachers—Job satisfaction. | Teacher turnover—Prevention. | Burn out (Psychology)—Prevention.
Classification: LCC LB1027 .M363 2023 (print) | LCC LB1027 (ebook) | DDC 371.1001/9—dc23/eng/20230223
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023007772
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023007773
Cover Design: Wiley
Cover Image: © White Bear Studio/Getty Images
For our first teachers:
Our families.
And our forever teachers:
Our students.
Introduction
“It was honestly great to feel understood. When a teacher is just as eager to learn about you as they are to teach, I feel like there is a bond and mutual respect, which makes it easier for both students and teachers.”
—Leianna, Class of 2017
Why We Wrote This Book
When the COVID‐19 pandemic began in March 2020, our lives, like everyone else's, were thrown into upheaval. New York City was ground zero for the initial wave of the pandemic, and we were both locked down inside our homes, Rebekah in the South Bronx, and Meredith nearby in Baldwin, Long Island. As we struggled to maintain some semblance of normalcy in our personal and professional lives, we checked in with each other remotely. One day that April, Meredith texted Rebekah, “I still dream about our book.” She was referring to the book we'd started talking about writing years earlier, when we were teacher leaders and coaches together during the 2012–2013 school year. We'd periodically talked about cowriting a book about our experiences as mid‐career educators, but life had gotten in the way, and we never took it any further. In April 2020, however, we had nothing but time. We started writing on our own and then meeting weekly online to read and discuss each other's work. We spent the entire first two years of the pandemic writing together. Many people had pandemic projects. This was ours.
Originally, we thought we were writing a book about how to prevent and heal teacher burnout. However, as we wrote, we discovered that actually we were writing a book about purpose. We realized the key to avoiding burnout and recovering from it over the course of our own careers has been having a strong sense of why we are educators in the first place. We came to understand that when you are able to stand in your purpose, you can use that purpose as a litmus test for decision‐making to ensure you are actually living and working in alignment with your purpose. We've found that burnout generally stems from a misalignment around purpose, and educators can prevent and heal burnout by rekindling, reconnecting, and recommitting to their purpose.
Our own purpose in this book is to help other educators uncover how to maintain a long, productive, inspired career in education. Through stories from our own careers over a combined four decades as teachers and leaders, as well as reflective activities to help you think about your own journeys and experiences, you'll learn how to stay connected to your why: your dynamic sense of purpose as an educator. You'll learn to uncover and nourish your own why and how to keep that purpose close when all of the things that lead to burnout start to separate you from it.
We want to reinforce that we're sharing our stories to illustrate what this reflective work has looked like in our own lives, not as instructive case studies of what we think you should do. We share our experiences not because we think they're universal but because we know they're real. You have your own real experiences in your own real context, and we hope our stories provide examples that give you new ways to think about the choices you're making in your personal and professional life. We've spent our education careers in urban communities, and we were both high school humanities teachers, but the reflective work that we've done ourselves, that we’re supported other educators in doing, and that we’re inviting you to do is applicable for educators in all grades, subjects, and settings.
Who This Book Is For
While this book is for individual educators and the leaders who support them, we want to acknowledge there are structural factors that lead to educator burnout. We strongly support the systemic changes necessary to transform the profession into a sustainable lifelong career option, especially in the schools and districts where the demands on teachers and leaders are particularly Herculean. However, this book is for the people who need support right now and can't wait for the often‐protracted pace of systemic change, so we focus on actions that individual educators can take to improve their own working conditions and quality of life. We are grateful for the work that researchers, labor unions, and other advocacy organizations are doing to fight for the systemic changes that will impact all educators and students for the better. We also recognize that, while the pandemic exacerbated the factors that contribute to burnout, many of those factors long preexisted the pandemic. We believe reflection on and connection to purpose is the way forward for individual educators in the context of challenges both directly related to and beyond the pandemic.
We're especially interested in engaging with educators who are in the early‐to‐middle stages of their careers. Much of what we share in this book is advice we wish we'd received as preservice and beginning teachers, as well as when we were at crucial career crossroads, including burnout periods. If you are new to the profession, supporting those who are, or considering whether to continue in the profession, we hope you find stories and activities here to help you maintain a long, productive, and sustainable career in education. Teachers have the best jobs on the planet but also the hardest ones. Most of us can't do it on our own or without a strategy for how to make it through the tough days, weeks, and years. We want all students to have happy, healthy teachers, but that can't happen if teachers don't have opportunities to reflect, heal, and reorient around their sense of purpose so their students are at the center of their work, which is why we start each chapter with a quote by one of our own current or former students. At the same time, our goal is not to keep all educators in the classroom no matter what. Rather, we want all educators to understand and live in alignment with their own sense of purpose, whatever that is.
We also want to emphasize that we are not mental health professionals. If you are in crisis, please seek professional help for the sake of your loved ones, your students, and your colleagues, as well as yourself.
How to Use This Book
In each chapter, we share our own reflective process with respect to the chapter's subject, followed by prompts and activities designed for all educators (the “Your Turn” sections) and then the “Additional Considerations for Leaders” in particular. Our goal in sharing our own experiences is to make our thinking visible, as we've worked through these same reflective prompts and activities in our time as teachers and leaders.
We hope our examples help illustrate the essential, rewarding, and messy process of reflective engagement we have undertaken and continue to work through two decades into our careers in education. However, if our stories don't resonate with you or you'd prefer to jump right into practice and application for your own experiences and context, feel free to skip to the “Your Turn” sections of each chapter, as well as the reproducibles in the appendix and at http://www.wiley.com/go/educatingpassionpurpose.
In Chapters 1 and 2, we focus on the process of uncovering your purpose and what can happen when your actions and experiences aren't aligned with your purpose: burnout. In the remaining chapters, we focus on how to make decisions aligned with your purpose so you can maintain a sustainable future in the profession and prevent burnout moving forward. By staying connected to your why, you can figure out for yourself when to say “yes” and “no” in all the right ways.
As educators ourselves, we know everyone learns in different ways, so please engage with the “Your Turn” activities in the ways that will be most resonant and effective for you. Here are a few possibilities:
Read the reflective prompts, pause, and respond to them in your head.
Write out your responses on paper or your device.
Keep a separate journal or blog while you read this book and write your responses there.
Record voice memos or videos on your phone or elsewhere for private use.
Record voice memos or videos and post them on a platform of your choice to share with your community.
Share and discuss your responses with a book group, professional team, or other reading community.
Work through the book with an existing professional learning community (PLC) or a new one created just for this purpose. Read a chapter a week, select prompts and activities to work through independently and collaboratively, share your reflections, and develop community commitments to next steps.
Work through the reproducibles, either in the book or via the downloads at
https://www.wiley.com/go/educatingpassionpurpose
.
Why Reflection Matters
Committing to a long, productive, sustainable career as an educator while maintaining your personal health and relationships, as well as fulfilling your nonprofessional goals and dreams, is long, hard work. We do not believe you'll be able to leave burnout in your rearview mirror forever by simply reading this book and completing all of the reflective activities. Rather, the work of staying connected and committed to your purpose is an ongoing, iterative process we continuously return to on our journeys as educators, especially because for so many of us the reasons why we became educators are at odds with what today's educational institutions expect from us and our students. We believe educators have the most difficult jobs in our society, and that work requires time for reflection, especially around purpose, to stay grounded, balanced, and capable of staying in the profession in a sustainable manner.
One particular responsibility of educators in America today is to lead the way in promoting anti‐racism in our school ecosystems. Anti‐racism work is sometimes emphasized exclusively white teachers of students who are Black, Indigenous, or People of Color (BIPOC), and it is indeed vital for educators in predominantly BIPOC learning communities. We are both white women who have spent the majority of our educational careers working with predominantly BIPOC students. We continue to work each day to understand how our white identity impacts our work with students and schools so we can avoid causing more harm to young people and their families. We also want to emphasize that anti‐racism work is essential for teachers of white students, because the only way to stop perpetuating white supremacy is by ceasing the indoctrination of all children into systems of white supremacy, and school is where much of that indoctrination happens. This is why we believe the work of reflection is essential and why we continue this work daily.
This book is designed to help you more deeply understand your purpose, including how it is informed by your racial identity. We want to emphasize that we are not anti‐racism training experts. This book is not a substitute for doing deep anti‐racism work. The suggestions at the end of Chapter 6 can be a starting point for identifying the books, trainings, organizations, experts, and learning communities that can help you do this vital work.
We want to emphasize that we are striving toward anti‐racism every day as people and as educators, and we know that sometimes we still miss the mark. We keep trying because we understand the harm done to young people and their communities when educators choose to be ignorant and indifferent about the impact of white supremacy in our schools, classrooms, and society. In her seminal book Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy, Gholdy Muhammad writes, “We want to cultivate young people who, across the course of their lifetimes, will disrupt, disquiet, or unhinge oppression.” As educators tasked with empowering, inspiring, and supporting those young people, that work starts with all of us in the schools and districts where we teach and lead every day.
Chapter 1Finding Your Purpose
“When teachers love their job it shows! The most memorable thing for me about school in general was feeling that sense of support from adults, teachers, and staff at the school. There is nothing more amazing than having at least one teacher who believes in you.”
—Martha, Class of 2010
Being an educator is not a job you start when you clock in or walk into your classroom, and it does not end when you clock out or leave the school building. This is why it is so essential to stay connected to your purpose: when things get tough it's hard to walk away for the day or the weekend. Instead, you're more likely to take your challenges home with you and carry them around, leading to the stress and exhaustion that cause burnout. As educators, we need to have a deep understanding of our purpose and what we're passionate about because that's what will keep us motivated to show up for our students and help us keep our fire going day after day.
Your why can be your lifeline when you start to feel depleted. Massages and Netflix are temporary, but your why is a life source you can return to over and over. In fact, we like to think of reconnecting with our why as a way to power up like a video game character that needs more energy. Summoning your sense of purpose can work the same way.
Staying deeply connected to your purpose starts with understanding where it comes from. What life events and people influenced you to become an educator? In our experience, educators sometimes struggle to articulate their true why. They can easily explain how and why they entered the teaching profession, but not why they do the work of an educator today. Sometimes they talk about how much they've always loved working with children or mention a teacher who greatly influenced them. Others are passionate about their content or thought that teaching would be a practical use of their degree. These are all important factors in explaining how you entered the profession, but they don't necessarily explain what has kept you going. In this chapter, we share our stories of how we found our purposes as educators, as well as some prompts to help you uncover and connect deeply to your own sense of purpose.
What we reflect on in this chapter:
How Meredith's parents inspired her
why
.
How Rebekah's sense of discord between school and learning inspired her
why
.
Ways to articulate, connect to, and troubleshoot a clear purpose statement.
What we hope you take away from this chapter:
A clear purpose statement about why you're an educator.
How to mine your formative experiences as a learner to understand your purpose.
Especially for leaders: why your school or district needs a purpose, too.
Meredith's Turn
My Why, My Drive
From a very young age, I knew I wanted to be an educator. I wanted what I thought was a superpower. I wanted to create a classroom space my students would walk into and know they were going to be supported, loved, and challenged. I wanted to create a space where they could question, grow, and express themselves. I wanted students to love history because it was a class where they would hear and question stories from the past and make connections to today's society. It has always been very important for students to know there is an educator at their school who respects and cares for them as individuals and this is why I became an educator.
As a school leader, my why continues to drive me but when I started my journey as an educator I did not think I would be a school leader, such as a principal. I thought I would be a teacher my entire career. What I realized during the later years, as a teacher, is that the true impact I had was what I was in control of and that was the students in my classroom. I realized I wanted to expand my area of influence in the school to impact every student and ensure there was a community of educators who were driven by their purpose. When this shift began to take over my thinking, I knew my purpose was growing and this is why I am driven as a school leader. It was not that my why had changed, but I realized how it could drive and push me to lead.
Pain and Loss
I grew up in an upper‐middle‐class family, where my father was always working and my mother worked only when she wanted to. Both of my parents influenced my decision to become an educator in numerous ways, even though neither were in education. I know my mother was not well throughout the later years of her life and maybe if she was healthy, she might have worked, but her reality prevented her from working. My brother and I were her focus and as she got sicker and could not take care of us, that was what hurt her in so many ways.
My mother was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when I was seven years old. There were times when she was in remission and there were times when she had flare ups that would lead to her in the hospital, paralyzed on one side, or she would temporarily lose her eyesight. During these flare ups, she never complained about her pain; rather she was always there for her family and friends. I think back on this and think of the strength she mustered to listen to our long‐winded stories from her hospital bed. She would smile and just listen. When she was feeling good, she never missed a back‐to‐school shopping experience, a parent‐teacher conference, or a family day. She pushed herself to be present and support us.
I realize that I internalized this strength and drive, which pushed me to ensure I fulfilled my life goal of being an educator. I am inspired each day by my mother's strength to wake up every day in pain and know that her life would end before she met her grandchildren. Her strength lives inside me, lights me up, and gives me strength when I am feeling weak and insecure. As a high schooler, I was given the task at times to take care of my mother. There were times when I had to brush her teeth, comb her hair, change her clothes, and even change and help clean her after she went to the bathroom, but she would look into my eyes and always smile and let me know how she was proud of me and that she loved me. It is her inspiration and strength that lives within me each day to never give up on my goals and desires and this is why I always push myself to be the educator I know I am meant to be.
Becoming Invisible
In high school, I was always a good student who got my work done but I was far from the top of my class. I was the student who completed my homework and studied hard for tests, as learning did not come naturally for me. I had to spend time to ensure I would pass all of my classes. It was always important to me to do well in school even at times when I did not have the energy to get out of bed and perform. I did not want to disappoint my teachers or family. At the same time, during my senior year of high school, I became one of my mother's caretakers along with my father and her loving caretaker Betty. My mom's multiple sclerosis took over her body like a rollercoaster. She became paralyzed, lost her vision, and the day of my high school graduation, she entered into a coma that she never truly came out of.
How did I deal with this sadness and loss? I turned to smoking pot and not taking care of myself. I would go to school most days late and in pajamas. During my lunch break, my friends would ambush me into taking care of myself. I remember on a few occasions going to my best friend Aly's house and she would just hand me a towel and soap and would just tell me she would wait for me after I showered so we could go eat lunch. If I did not shower at her house, I might not have showered for days and I always wore my pj's to school. I also often would go home during lunch and smoke pot before going back to school. Now I know I must have smelled and I looked like a mess and still no one at school spoke to me about this beyond my friends. It was as if I was invisible to my counselors and/or teachers. I was late to school every day and I would go right to the main office and hand in a late note in my handwriting and “signed” by my mom. For the record, my mom could not write as she was paralyzed, so I signed them. I was never called out on it or offered support from my school. These nonactions are what put fire in me to be the educator I became and still strive to be today. I want to ensure that any young person who walks into my classroom or school who experiences pain and loss so deeply knows they are not alone and will never be invisible.
My Drive for Leadership
On the flip side, when I think of my father and his work, I think of a fiercely determined leader who always expressed his company's needs to make sure it was successful. His company, Silver Threads, was one of the first and most successful women's clothing companies for plus‐size women. He had a showroom in the garment district of New York City and a factory in New Jersey with over 150 employees. As a child, some of my favorite memories are the days my dad took me into the city to go to work with him. I have vivid memories of driving into the city with my dad and on the way he would take business calls on his car phone (yes, a car phone not a cell phone). During these calls, he would set up for the day. I remember thinking his conversations would get so passionate with his employees and I would think about how it could be hard to work for my dad but in the end this is one of the reasons he was so successful. He believed in his business and he believed that if he was clear with his expectations and goals, then he could ensure his clients would be happy. I also remember when we would get into his office, he would order breakfast and/or lunch for the people who worked for him. He always made sure the company kitchen was stocked and the candy bowl filled for everyone. He also always praised his sales team when they got a new client and his production team knew of their success.
When my dad would come home from work day in and day out, he always made sure my mom had everything he could provide for her to try and reduce her pain and have her live her life to her fullest. I saw his determination to comfort her even when he knew he could not take her pain away. When she lost her ability to climb stairs, he installed electric stairs in our house so she could get from her room to the downstairs and not be trapped upstairs all day. When she could not sleep in their bed anymore, he got her a hospital bed; when she could not get into their car, he got her a handicap‐accessible van. He always put every resource he had to try and prolong her life as much as possible.
My father's strength to take care of my mother, continue to run his business, and provide for my brother and me during this time is also integrated into why I am a school leader today. As I watched my father not give up on his business while our family was falling apart, I also saw my father never give up on caring for my mother even when he knew there was nothing he could do to take away her pain. When opportunities came up in my life for me to pursue school leadership, I realized I could have more of an impact and my why could expand. I was not only responsible for the students in my classroom but I was responsible for everything that happened at the school. This is when I connected to my dad, and his passion and ability to lead gave me the strength to believe in myself as a school leader. I knew being a leader would put me in situations where I had to have difficult conversations, make very large and impactful decisions, and speak out in a way that challenged my soft‐spoken tone. But what I knew is if I put the needs and goals of my students and community first, I could do anything. This drive and passion lived inside me every day as a teacher and continues to drive me as a school leader.
Rebekah's Turn
Schooling vs. Learning
I was an excellent student, probably a dream student for most of my teachers, but I wasn't really in it for the love of learning. I was a perfectionist, terrified of making a mistake, constitutionally averse to failure in any form, and anything less than perfect, or an A, or the best, or number one at anything academic was a failure. School was a place where I excelled, but it was also a minefield where any misstep could mean catastrophe. If I got anything less than a perfect score on a test, my classmates and teachers would ask me what happened. It felt like there was nowhere to go but down.
Learning by reading was a different matter. To say that I loved to read does not come close to my relationship to books. Yes, I read at night when I was supposed to be asleep, but I also read in the car, at the grocery store, in church, at family functions, on the school bus, anywhere I could sneak a book. One day in second grade, I got in trouble for reading The Secret Garden in my lap when I was supposed to be listening to my classmates read aloud. (Because my teacher knew my mother, I was terrified I would get in trouble for getting in trouble.) I read anything and everything.
My parents, and especially my grandmother, were the champions of my reading life. My mom would drop me off at Brockway, our community library, to roam the children's section and check out books with my very own library card. I was obsessed with the teen magazines at the library, and eventually my mom bought me subscriptions to Seventeen, Teen, and YM. When I was in eighth grade, my Aunt Claire gave me a subscription to the holy grail of teen magazines, Sassy, where I found book recommendations like Weetzie Bat, What's Eating Gilbert Grape?, and Blake Nelson's Girl
