motivation and inspiration
The career of teaching is often tiring, challenging at at times difficult. Despite having relatively little experience, whilst I have never questioned that I want to teach, there have already been several times that the challenges almost outweight the positives. However, then a pupil thanks you for all your help - all those extra hours of rehearsals, or personally adpated revision resources, or even just the smile you give them every morning to check in and see how they are feeling. As I began to build my professional twitter account (as opposed to the account where you share Eastenders spoilers and Love Island shock evictions!), I realised the importance of supporting one another and creating a positive platform for all involved. Below are some of the inspirational quotes, motivational messages and honest tweets that have lifted my spirits and kept me remembering why we do what we do, why we work hard to educate the next generation and beyond...
Kindess
This quotes is true for both students and staff. It promotes the idea of everyday kindness and utilising kind thoughts, words and choices to impact another person. We never know what something is feeling, or the challenges they maybe facing. At the end of a difficult day, or when you get to the 20th essay to mark, or when a student comes back into formtime with no one having spoke to them that morning, this quote provides a message for us all. Spread kindness, and change someone else's day for the better.
Learning Lessons
Mistakes can be a difficult concept to deal with, not only for students when they don't 'do well enough' in a test or maybe they've learnt the hard way in a friendship but also for adults, and more specifically teachers. It seems that as we become professional teachers there can be judgements from our families, friends and pupils that we know everything and that maybe we exect to highly of oursleves aswell. This quote made me think about the constant reflection teaching brings as a career, and that the most important thing is to not dwell on mistakes but to use them as learning opportunities to become even better.
Keep going
I'm sure mnay of us can name 'difficult roads' in teaching. Maybe the moment when a student is refusing to partake, or there's an obvious falling out that happened at breaktime or when you've planned a technological whizz of a lesson and the school wifi is down all day. Whatever you difficult road is, we must remember each one leads to a 'beautiful destination' however big or small.