Cruisin' to a New School Year

Everyone loves a vacation. It's your time to escape from the monotony of daily life without the responsibilities of cooking, cleaning, or running to appointments  Only the prospect of relaxing and forgetting about the need for a clock. I recently went on my first cruise and was looking forward to all of those things. The copious amounts of food, relaxing, and spending time in the sun as well as quality time with my Nook. What I didn't expect? The sense of entitlement everyone has in vacation mode. I was the victim of cut-n-chats in the ice cream line, and elbowed out of the way at the sight of sushi on the buffet line. I understand we all worked hard and deserve a break to enjoy the fruits of our labor. What I didn't realize was that manners and caring for our fellow human beings went right out window.

I couldn't help but think about going back to school and that same sense of entitlement that people wear as their badge of honor. Well I've been teaching for X amount of years... I have seniority in the department... I have... I have... I have... How do I all these I haves help us achieve our goal of helping our students achieve? Yes, knowledge is power, but that sense of power isn't always helpful. It tends to get in the way.  The new successful school environment is that of a collaborative team inside your building, but also within the PLN community. This is even more important with the great equalizers of the Common Core State Standards and PARCC/Smarter Balance. It's time to cast our prerogatives to the side and think how can they help us become a better cog in the machine.

But how do we do this? I think part of it is having patience and an open-mind.  It is easy to get snippy with people. All too often the drama of our personal lives and opinions of our co-workers clouds our ability to accept new ideas and we default to catty. With the start of a new school year it is time to give tabula rasa a chance with a fresh start. Start looking for the positive each of your colleagues has to offer and stay enthusiastic and informed by continuing to educate yourself.  

Now while I will not be fighting other teachers for sushi in the cafeteria, I will take that sense of vacation entitlement and leave it with summertime mode. The school year is a great time to start something new and set some achievable, meaningful goals.  Why not let that badge go?  You, and your co-workers will be happy… and we all know that happiness goes a long way.