Attitude
A positive attitude is necessary to reach our goals – students, teachers, staff and parents.
The reality is that everyone has bad days. Sometimes we have bad days several times a month. These bad days could be the result of many factors. Most of the time, bad days are a result of something that is happening in our personal lives. I’d like to say that we should leave our personal lives at home and only bring our professional lives to work, but we are all humans—well, most of us, anyway. No matter how much we’d like to leave our personal lives at home, it’s simply impossible. What we CAN do professionally, however, is do our best to comfort one another and guide each other through our difficulties.
When I was a child, I lived with my grandmother for some time. As we all know, children also have bad days, for one reason or another. Sometimes it’s as simple as their favorite socks were in the wash that day and they couldn’t wear them. When I had a bad day when I was staying with my grandmother, she would tell me to ‘fake it until you break it’. What she meant by this is that I had to smile, even though I didn’t want to, and eventually the smile would break my bad mood. She was right. I started out not wanting to smile, but I smiled anyway, and eventually my mood changed. I encourage teachers, students and staff to do the same. ‘Fake it until you break it!’
If, however, the ‘bad day’ is a result of something that has happened in our professional capacity, the situation should be immediately brought to the attention of a supervisor so solutions can be found. A school should establish a Culture of Caring, which also pertains to caring for the welfare of teachers and staff.
Ability
A certain level of ability is required. It’s a well-known fact that some people are born with a natural disposition for teaching and learning, while others struggle a bit more. However, everyone has at least SOME level of ability. It is our job to figure out our own as well as our students’ strengths and weaknesses and build on both. I encourage everyone to set goals for improving their abilities and seek assistance when necessary.
Adjustment
If abilities or attitudes are not where they need to be, we make adjustments until they are. This happens through commonly accepted practices until those proven practices are deemed inappropriate. Then, we look for other ways to make adjustments. In other words, we never give up. We are educators. If our students fail, we fail.