What's your Why?

My master's class recently watched Simon Sinek's video about how Great Leaders inspire action. In it, he talks about the Golden Circle; this way of organizing the what, how, and why of what you are doing. He explains that the great leaders start from the innermost part of the circle; they define their Why behind what they are doing and they allow the Why to guide their actions.

For my experience as an educational leader, my Why is to help students become geo-literate and to have life-long skills of resiliency and perseverance. My How is done through the various lessons and subjects I teach such as the Water Crisis or the Syrian Refugees and opportunities to correct homework and tests. My What is what I do on a daily basis in my classroom to teach Global studies.

In my classroom, we talk a lot about how it is important to understand our world around us in order to make better decisions about it. We begin with the Why it is important to understand our world at the beginning of the year instead of the what we will be doing over the course of the year.

The Quiet Rebellion

Today's climate for teaching is an interesting one. It is one of teacher strikes, worry for school shootings, and dealing with everyone's input on what teaching should be or what it all entails. I recently read a news story about how Donald Trump Jr. congratulated students on attending a rally and standing firm and not listening to their "loser teachers" who are trying to indoctrinate them with socialist tendencies. My immediate response was anger and frustration - like a lot of teachers who responded to it with everything that teachers do on a daily basis.

Then I looked at a quote from "The Well-Balanced Teacher" that said:

"It seems to me that the best teachers are the ones who are quietly rebellious"

This quote resonated with me in a unique way. We as teachers face so much outside pressure and have to deal with non-teacher entities trying to control what we do and how we teach our students or even criticizing the importance of our work. But we as teachers have a quiet power. We have the opportunity to influence and impact our students' lives for the worse or hopefully the better. When I think about that quote, it reminds me of that power we have and that we have a duty to work and try to make things better by showing our students what it means to work together or how they can be more resilient. I think it also goes to show that the best teachers listen to what they are being told to do; by principles or districts or governments; and they find the gray area where what is best for their students and their future and the procedures and programs implemented by higher ups overlap. 

As a social studies teacher, and more importantly a global studies teacher, I try to instill life long lessons with my students. We talk about the importance of the world and it's issues and I try to instill in them the belief that they have the power to change what is happening. With social studies, I get a lot of the questions about the political system and what is going on in the world and I see the effect that the news and media have on my students opinions and beliefs. Part of my quiet rebellion is to create lessons that make my students question the world around them and understand that they have the power to change and improve what is happening; that they too have the power to be quietly rebellious and to instigate and spread change little by little to make the world better.