Teaching is an incredibly challenging and fulfilling profession. It’s emotionally charged and demands and expects so much of us. As teachers we give everything we’ve got to see our students be successful and thrive.

This posting is a very personal one, with a powerful message for us all.

Leadership is challenging. And to be a good leader you need to make tough calls. While good leaders aim to be transparent and involve others in the decision making. To that end there is so much that teachers don’t see. They don’t need to see. And as leaders we need to shield teachers. While every effort goes in to creating a positive and professional culture, there are times when a decision falls the other way. As professionals we need to respect that and know that we are all trying to do the best we can to create the best conditions for learning. There are obvious ebbs and flows in our line of work. And when we begin to question ourselves (which we do) or lose confidence in why we are leading down a particular path, or not. We must keep our eye on the ball. I read a profound quote from Steve Jobs today. It said, “If you want to make people happy, don’t get into leadership, sell ice-cream.” How true is that….

We hear teachers say, ‘it is about the kids.’ This is why we are doing what we do, every single day. Yesterday, I was feeling rather deflated. It happens. More frustrated that we still have teachers who just don’t get it.

And then I received an email. Like the universe was dropping a piano on my head to snap me out of my funk. We must keep our eye on the ball. I’m listening!

Above is a photo of Kevin and I during my first overseas post in Sweden in 2006, where I was teaching a grade 3/4 composite class. Kevin’s mother emailed me saying that she was clearing out his room and came across a book with a letter I wrote to him.

Tine, Kevin’s mother, wanted a photo of me to give to Kevin as something special for his 20th birthday. She went on to say, that I was Kevin’s best teacher and had the most impact on him throughout his schooling. One of the sentences I wrote in the above letter stated the importance of following his dreams and how I would ‘love to see where he was in 10 years….’

Well, I got my answer and it could not have come at a better time. One that made me quite emotional. It hit me like a lightning bolt. No matter how tough our job gets, we must keep our eye on the ball. Our students. This is one of these times, when we say it is about the kids and mean it with a full heart. Every word! Kevin is now at Coventry University studying Motorsport Engineering. He is following his passion – formula 4 championship racing. I got goosebumps reading the email from his mother.

The other takeaway I got from this is the importance of knowing or finding out the paths our past students take later in life. We need to find a way that makes that tangible. This is where the real fulfillment comes from in our profession. To appreciate that we had a very important role in their lives. There is no better feeling when years later, our students of ‘tomorrow’ look back, reach out and say you made a difference – look where I am now! That is what this is all about for me. Moments with impact. We have so many moments with our students. Moments we don’t realize the gravity of and how that stays with our students years beyond moving on through their lives. As teachers, we must keep our eye on the ball. It is beautiful moments, stories like these that make it all worth it.

I am fine with the tough talks, making calls and challenging negativity. This is because I have my eye back on the ball today!

Make a conscious decision about your future. Think through your long-term plan (a.k.a. 5-yr plan for some, and 10-yr plan for others) and start working towards it.

Will staying in the school move you one step closer to your long-term plan, or will leaving do that?

Step 1: Think through your long-term plan:

Picture your IDEAL situation. What do you see yourself doing at work? Where are you living? How many children do you have? What are your children doing – is that even a consideration? Who is taking care of your parents?

Your Vision:

• If you could dare to think out loud, where do you want to be in 10 years?
• What are all the crazy and wacky things you could do to realize your long-term plan?
• Suppose, just for a moment, you live in a world where fear and anxiety do not exist. What could you do now?

Focus on the Outcome:

• What is it that you really, REALLY want? Dig deep…
• What is the PAIN of NOT achieving your plan?

Align your vision with your Values:

• Is this plan in line with your values? (Hint: Ask yourself what’s really important to you in life – will this plan help you achieve more of that?)
• Is this plan something YOU truly want, or is it something you think you SHOULD have? (Hint: If it is a ‘should have’, it may be someone else’s dream)
• When you think about your plan does it give you a sense of deep contentment or ‘rightness’, happiness and excitement?

Step 2: Work towards your long-term plan:

Now break this down into achievable steps by answering the following questions:

• What’s good about your current situation? (e. what’s the benefit of staying where you are?)
• Can you hold on to those good aspects if you decide to make a change? Or is that something you’re willing to sacrifice?
• Suppose you had all the information you needed, what would your next step/s be?
• If you did nothing else this school year, what 3 things would still make the year a success for you?
• What can you start doing, stop doing or do more of, to move towards your long-term plan? (Make a list using this “Action Brainstorming” tool)

If you still find yourself in a dilemma, please do reach out to me and I can conduct an online “Dilemma Coaching” session with you. Please note that you should have thought through all the questions I’ve listed above for that session to be effective. I can be reached via email at kavita@innersensecoaching.com or through my website at www.innersensecoaching.com.

Twitter, educational websites, articles and news stories are all increasingly full of headlines about how kids love this latest gadget or that new gizmo. Photos show such children gathered around these shiny, new bits of technology pressing buttons and, apparently, learning all by themselves. Schools chuck cash at little robots and the latest big screen things with a thousand features nobody needs. They’re playing in virtual forests or putting a thing on their head and pretending to make a sandwich, yet get bored in a real forest and wouldn’t dream of making an actual sandwich they can eat. They’re flying hovering mechanical pests around while we all ignorantly pretend that one day they won’t have real weaponry on them… you know, like the real ones used by the military of powerful countries. They stare into screens with their increasingly ineffective eyes and suffer periods away from them like heroin-addicts waiting for their next hit. They will give their attention to a video of a teacher explaining something yet ignore the real human being in front of them.

Meanwhile, all the adults are saying more and more meaningless things about it all, like how “cool” or “awesome” it is. How this generation can “multi-task” so much better than previous ones. How they can learn “without us”. And, most ignorantly of all, how much “they love it”.

Now, let’s talk about something else kids “love”. Candy. They will gorge themselves on giant handfuls of fluorescent, toxic, carcinogenic, lumps of sugar, chemicals and the occasional bit of re-purposed animal product interminably until someone either stops them, it runs out or they throw up. Do we also think this is “cool” or “awesome”?

Don’t get me wrong. I think kids are capable of the most amazing things, but they still need guidance. Older generations have still earned the right to be concerned about something that doesn’t look quite right to them. People who have fought in wars or lost their fathers and uncles to conflicts that later turned out to just be testing grounds for the latest weapons technology have the right to feel uncomfortable about how robots and drones will probably end up (already are) being used and who will control them. People who grew up with gangs of friends who talked until the sun set and the voices of their mothers called them home for dinner have the wisdom to regret seeing their children and grandchildren vanish into little digital rectangles and six-second concentration spans. The millions and millions of people who have experienced the joy of arguments in the grey areas of existence between right and wrong, good or bad must have legitimate worries about generations emerging who know only of dichotomies, liking and disliking and believing the latest thing a computer told them to think.

Just because we conveniently ignore the fact that we too will be old, we too will be silenced, written off and shoved in a nursing home to wait to die by the apparently all-knowing younger generations doesn’t mean we can’t speak out now and call for some technological wisdom, some caution and maybe even… perish the thought… a little foresight? There’s a new sort of culture that’s telling us that the older people get the more stupid they become. We’re issuing licenses to our young to ignore us while willingly giving them the tools they need to dehumanise themselves and their poor unsuspecting offspring. Oh, and I forgot the best bit, manufacturing all this shite is systematically making the air, water and land too toxic for any of them to inhabit.

Yeah… “cool” right? Pretty “awesome” eh?

Now, I know most people won’t even have read this far into the posting and will have already liked, not liked, retweeted, followed or unfollowed on the basis of the title, first few sentences or whatever image I put in it. I also know that the technology I am using to write and share this is the technology I am talking about. Be careful about falling into the trap I referred to above, about completely agreeing or disagreeing, about thinking I am totally right or totally wrong. Neither you or I know… let’s not flatter ourselves. Just allow yourselves to ponder, to ask questions, to think critically and, yes, to be just about as cynical as our children and their children deserve us to be.