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“For some of us, it is a vocation, not just a job. It’s what I have always referred to as good work.”
She questioned her relevance, her ability to connect with the kids, the way every text she introduced in class was classified as problematic by her students, who struck her as far more sensitive and humorless than she had ever been at that age.
Very slowly and then all at once, she was closer to the end of her career than the start, a black-and-white fact printed on her annual state pension statement that was impossible to ignore.
“There are some days when all you can do is just make it until the last bell,”
A person could color-code and list and organize, but in the end, life sometimes just happened to you.
Teacher trainings and district-led meetings were often run this way, with an approach that treated the adults in the room as if they were children, not professionals. Ms. Jackson had sometimes wondered if hedge fund managers and attorneys sat around in meetings being asked to draw a colorful picture that represented the group’s consensus or to post clarifying follow-up questions on a piece of chart paper labeled parking lot so that these things could be considered later.
I trust that my students are capable scholars who are able to separate themselves from language that may trouble them on a personal level and instead focus on analyzing how the language works to a certain effect. This teaches them to become careful, critical thinkers capable of solving problems, working with others, and communicating clearly. In essence, it teaches them to be good global citizens.
In this business, we can only focus on what we can do in the moment. We can only focus on the next good choice.
We cannot control other people or their behavior. We can only try to do the next right thing.
She knew she had a big personality, and she knew she had a reputation for being loud and irreverent. She had enough insight to recognize that she could overwhelm people. But that was just who she was, she often told herself. That was her, like it or leave it.
he also wondered, not for the first time in his career, why doing the right thing was so often punished
Luz knew that the best teachers never tired of learning themselves.
They were all overwhelmed and underpaid. There was a sense of solidarity among them that was built around the noble goal of helping young people learn and thrive in the face of constant bureaucratic absurdity and nefarious external forces.
