The Teacher's Motivation

Make sure your students know that the reason you are a teacher is because you genuinely like working with them and want to help them.

The important word in this sentence is “genuinely,” because your approach cannot be a cynical trick. If your concern for your students is not genuine, they will sense your transparent dishonesty, and your relationship with them may be permanently damaged.

Keep your door open during preparation periods in order to talk with students about their successes and frustrations, academically and otherwise. You can also devote a small amount of your class time for this as well. When your students are shown that you care about their progress in academics, sports, extra-curricular activities, and life in general, the bond you create with them will have a positive effect on your students’ motivation to perform in your class.

One way to help you bring this about is to have students complete an interest inventory at the beginning of the year, in which they list their hobbies, interests, activities, and future goals. If you keep these interests in mind, you can bring up information pertaining to those topics throughout the year to create a connection with each individual student. It gives them, correctly, the impression that you actually care about their lives, which in turn has a significantly positive impact on their motivation to learn, as well as your motivation to teach.

Just as importantly, your kindness and concern will serve as an example of good character that lives on in the memory of your students. A crucial point to remember: always keep your door open when meeting alone with a student in order to proactively avoid the appearance of impropriety.

Keep remembering the value of what you do, and keep searching for ways to create a bond with each student. Those positive thoughts will have to outweigh the frustrations you will face in order for you to keep moving forward with optimism, which in turn keeps the overall tone of your classroom upbeat, happy, and cooperative.

Defending Our Profession with Gratitude and Humility

You are likely to be happier and more productive if you focus on your students and refuse to engage in controversies about the public's view of the profession. 

Experience shows that the most effective way to counter that type of attitude is to accept it without argument. Quite often, the harshest critics of the teaching profession have experienced legitimate frustration and disappointment with their own jobs and life choices. Unfortunately, when teachers attempt to defend themselves by pointing out the challenges and difficulties of the job and the significance of the role we play, it only tends to inspire more negativity and resentment among some members of the public. You will feel better if you try to empathize with them, and put their negativity in perspective. If you are doing the job correctly, you will know the truth.

If you feel the need to respond in some way to negativity about the profession, rather than listing the difficulties and challenges you face in your teaching career, try instead the approach of gratitude and humility. You can express your gratitude for the advantages awarded to you in your teaching position, with an emphasis on being humbled by the privilege of playing such an important role in the lives of your students. Indignation, self-importance, and defensiveness on your part will frequently result in the other person increasing his or her resentment and searching for points to counteract you, while gratitude and humility almost always serve as the antidote that stops negative attacks in their tracks.

Does this response sound weak to you? Should we not have the courage to fight to defend the honor of our chosen career? That is exactly what you will accomplish. More so than any other approach, gratitude and humility have the power to neutralize any negativity aimed at schools and educators. The dignity of your behavior will also reflect well on teachers everywhere, diminishing the resentment and increasing the respect the general public has for our profession.

Feel free to post your thoughts!

A Warm Welcome to Teachers Everywhere!

Thank you for visiting my teaching blog!

If you're a new teacher, I want to assure you--everything is going to be all right.

From time to time, I'll offer my humble advice to help solve some of the problems we all encounter in the teaching profession. To read more, please check out my book from Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Classroom Advice for New Teachers: A Proactive Approach for Meeting the Daily Challenges of the Profession. If you like, you can order it through Amazon at this address:  https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B07NC8S9B6 or www.amazon.com/author/jeffjulian. You can access it from the publisher's website at this address: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781475849110/Classroom-Advice-for-New-Teachers-A-Proactive-Approach-for-Meeting-the-Daily-Challenges-of-the-Profession.

For my first post, I'd like to offer what I believe to be a central truth about our profession:

It is a tremendous privilege for us to stand in front of a group of young people and presume to explain to them what the world is like.

Whether you're studying to become a teacher or you're already a seasoned veteran, we all need to remember to look at our chosen profession with the proper perspective. Not many people have the privilege of influencing so many, at such an impressionable time of their lives. Try not to get distracted by the daily frustrations that enter your lives and your classrooms, and remember the honor that it is to play such a significant role in the lives of your students. When you remind them that you are aware of that privilege, many of those distractions and frustrations will be minimized.

I'm very interested to read your questions, thoughts and comments. Please feel free to post your responses!