Visit the Carnival of Education at CEA Blog.
TEN Blog responds to an NPR story on why teachers stay or go. A teacher interviewed on NPR says teachers must hear a “call” to teach.
Somehow it feels like this viewpoint really discounts the impact of effective teacher training, mentoring, and professional development, chalking teachers’ staying power up to a mysterious “it†factor. (You’ve got it or you don’t; you can’t learn it).
I also wonder if teaching, at least the first few years, is sometimes more difficult and frustrating — or at least disappointing — for those teachers who feel called to it. The pressure to succeed at the thing you were born to do is pretty high.
Nerd Mom is hosting this week’s Carnival of Homeschooling.
Sometimes, a job is what you do.
This year my students (seventh- and eighth-grade English language learners) read The Old Man and the Sea. One day, when we had a few minutes to spare, I had the seventh graders pick a favorite quote from the book and illustrate it. One student drew a picture that I hope I never lose.
It shows the skeleton of the marlon up against a barren shore with shapes that seem like rocks and debris. The sky has two puffy clouds and a rather harsh, lumpy sun. The overall scene is desolate yet in some way geometrically elegant. The quote:
“Perhaps I should not have been a fisherman, he thought. But that was the thing that I was born for.”