Choose Courage over Comfort this School Year – I Dare You!
Welcome back! I hope your summer was rejuvenating and your start to the 2019-20 school year has been awesome.
Driving by all the kids standing on their corner waiting to load the bus on that first day of school, I started thinking about all the “new” these kids were going to encounter in one day. The exciting (and sometimes scary) adventure of entering new classrooms, meeting new teachers, making new friends, anticipating new learning and creating new memories. They have their backpacks and school supplies and although it wasn’t on any school supply list, they also packed their COURAGE.
As teachers, along with our planners, class lists, computers, and colorful pens, we also pack our bags with COURAGE to tackle all things new. We too have lots of new – new students, new routines, new curricular materials, new colleagues.
Why do we all need to pack our COURAGE?
Everyday students walk into school, they have to make a decision whether or not they will let their true self be seen. They are constantly asking, “Do I belong here?”
Everyday teachers walk through the doors of the school, we make decisions about how we will create a safe learning space that allows our students to be seen. It takes courage to create a community where all our students feel a sense of belonging so that all our students learn, grow, and soar.
Students and teachers are asking each other to build a relationship of trust. Brene Brown shares with us that “Trust is earned in the smallest of moments. It is earned not through heroic deeds, or even highly visible actions, but through paying attention, listening, and gestures of genuine care and connection.”
The first weeks of school have most likely been filled with learning names, getting to know you activities, teaching new routines, creating a classroom culture and establishing what it means to be a mathematician. What does this look like beyond the first weeks of school? Where do the small moments occur each day? What are the things you do to pay attention, listen, and show gestures of genuine care and connection? How do your students know that you “see” them?
Brene Brown, author and researcher, offers educators some powerful resources, #Daring Classrooms, based on her latest book ‘Dare to Lead”. Click on the link and check it out – dig in with your colleagues and reflect on ways you can continue to build trust with your students and create safe spaces that allow students to show up as their true self.
I recently watched Brene’s Netflix special “a Call to Courage”. Since watching, I continue to wrestle with a powerful idea she shared during her talk. I’m leaving it with you to also wrestle with how this idea connects to the courage it takes to create space for our true self to be seen.
“The opposite of belonging is fitting in.”
Courtney LaRoche
MCTM President