Recently I came across an old photo while cleaning. It was a picture of my first communion celebration and I was posing with a group of my elementary teachers – the Sisters who guided my faith and education since I was an infant. Staring at the picture through my adult eyes (it’s been resting on my bedside table since I found it), I see the women very differently. These women had a calling, not only to God, but also to educate children. A few years ago I attended a funeral for one of them, Sister Henrietta who was the principal, and I recalled how high her standards where for all of us as students. When I spoke those words I looked into the eyes of Sr. Florentine, another teacher who was present and I realized Sr. Henrietta’s standards must have been just as high or higher for her staff members. As an educator I could totally relate to those expectations set by Sr. Henrietta, with one exception -she lived with her staff. Suddenly those smiling faces in the picture looked different. These women shared a home, shared meals together, prayed, laughed and, I’m sure, cried together, and many times they often vacationed together. Can you imagine doing that with your fellow faculty members on campus? How did they deal with being evaluated by someone they would eat dinner with that evening? How did they handle work conflicts while still living peacefully together? I’m sure there were arguments, but I have an idea as to how they did it. They were an amazing support system for each other, for every aspect of their lives. I think one never put herself above the calling each of them had – to educate children.
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| The amazing Sisters. Maintaining their focus |
Another group of educators I am so lucky to know is the staff of the high school I attended. How wonderful to be able to enjoy them through adult eyes! Because of Facebook I see that many of those teachers still carry on relationships with each other as well. Similar to my elementary teachers they all had the calling to educate or work with children in some way. Again, I am sure the frustrations with each other, the curriculum, or administration were present, but they sure masked them well! I never heard about any of it (perhaps teenage oblivion/narcissism is a good thing?) But I see them now, and they genuinely care about and support each other through this new stage (retirement) of their lives. That caring and support didn’t just happen recently. It had to have been present when they were working together.
As I reflect back as an adult on both groups of educators, I believe that support and care they had for one another was one big contributing factor to that safe feeling I had at both schools. The staff seemed at peace with each other, hence the safe, peaceful feeling I had with them as a whole. I knew they were concerned about me as a student, they wanted to push me as far as they could in their classes, their focus was educating their students.
It seems so simple: support the common goal of your colleagues to provide the best education to the students on your campus. But in reality, it’s difficult to push past egos (“my way is the best”) and feelings (“why is he/she always trying to upstage me?”) and maintain the focus on the students.
A few weeks ago I read a great blog post by Pernille Ripp http://goo.gl/D6AuDi about teachers bullying teachers. To me, it’s a must read for any educator. In addition to the courage to share her experience, what struck me were the comments to her post about how this had also happened to other teachers. I was not stunned so much as sad that the egos of adults get in the way of the education of our children in so many cases. I have heard numerous administrators tell staff to leave their problems at the door and focus on the students once they enter the building. But what happens when the safe place is outside the building? How are teachers expected to teach with passion when their own sense of professional value or worth is questioned or threatened? How do we push each other to be the best without pushing each other over the edge?
This year I created a 5 word GPS. A guide map, if you will, of the direction I want to take this year on my campus. Two of those words are support and community. In reflecting on that picture, the blog post, and the friendships I can see among my high school teachers, those two words I think are what helped my teachers from elementary through high school provide me with the safe, encouraging environment I needed to succeed as a student. I hope to do my part to provide support for each of the teachers on my campus and build with them a sense of community so they each feel our campus is a place where they matter not only as a teacher, but also as a person. I strongly believe that when someone feels good about themselves, when they feel that they matter to others, they will work hard toward a common goal: providing students with the best environment where education will flourish.
