"When we learn how to teach, we must also consider what it will feel like to teach."
Chapter 12
Every teacher must at some point experience the power of immovability to encourage this choice within every unfavorable experience. The goal of this chapter and the message to educators everywhere is to become immovable. Readers will continue on the powerful, reflective journey to understand the danger of the word “should” and to learn the most important words we can tell ourselves and communicate to our students. This chapter circles back to a previous story of disempowerment and shares how language and the concept of immovability refocused structures and changed the situation to full empowerment. You, too, can learn specific strategies and mantras that will bring you to immovability.
Questions:
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When you feel unsettled in your teacher life—triggered and bothered—what do you do to build yourself back up and to get yourself to immovable? Can you share this advice with others?
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This chapter focuses on the words “should” as well as “wouldn’t, don’t, won’t.” Explain to another how these words are powerful words that should be considered in our personal lives and teaching lives.
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Our teaching lives lead us on a personal journey. What have you experienced in your teaching career that you know you handle better now than years ago? Please, give yourself some credit for how much you have grown and changed.
Quotes:
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“Some of the hardest working teachers are the ones most in need of should-ing recovery.”
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“Sometimes ‘good enough’ is actually great.”
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“The clear path is one of self-empowerment and inner strength that disallows any doubt, whether external or internal, in what we know to be right.”
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“The firmer language sets a clear tone that we won’t accept certain behaviors in our classrooms, nor will we engage in certain conversations, and it teaches students how we expect them to show up in our spaces.”
“Our end-goal is to—every, single time—be immovable. To be empowered.”
