Teaching ?

Teaching ?

Teaching as a Profession ? Why ?
What makes us take up the calling, and for many of us, late in life, surely its not the pay and conditions, and at times in our communities our peers consider it a lower profession to Banking or used car salesman.

"Modern cynics and skeptics....see no harm in paying those to whom they entrust the minds of their children a smaller wage than to those to whom they entrust the care of their plumbing"~ John F Kennedy
Even politicions don't stand up for our educators and teachers of our future. Education and Health should be considered the highest, honourable and worthy of the Professions.
As Hattie states in his last two paragraphs of "Building Teacher Quality"Oct 2003
"We do have excellent teachers ,but we have reticence to identify such excellence in the fear that the others could be deemed not-excellent. We work on the absurd assumption that all teachers are equal, which is patently not true to any child, any parent, any principal, and known by all teachers. Such an assumption of equality brings all teachers down to the latest press scandal about a teacher, and our professions needs and deserves better than this. every other profession recognizes and esteems excellence ( Queens Counsels, Colleges of Surgeons, Supreme Court Judges) but in teaching we reward primarily by experience irrespective of excellence, we promote the best out of the classroom, and we have few goalposts to aim for in professional development, instead allowing others to define what latest fad, what new gimmick, what new policy will underline the content of professional development.

Like expertise in teaching, we need a deeper representation of excellence in teachers, a greater challenge and commitment to recognizing excellence, and a coherent, integrated, high level of deep understanding about teacher expertise."

This last pargraph resinated on a personal level, the need for a deeper representation of excellence in my life, to identify the ethics and values I represent as a teacher,
"Morality, like Art, means drawing a line someplace" Oscar Wilde(1854-1900)
What were going to be, my personal goal posts? What lines, I would draw in teaching?
Life experiences, How I see my role.
Pallative care taught me the value of Truth and Impermanence, a deeper understanding of Tibetan Buddhism "The root to Happiness"lies in the acceptance that life is uncertain. Now working as an assistant teacher I found great truth and change in children and young adults, and like pallative care, students need safe, support, encouragement and reassureance.
Teaching as a profession, is a work of worth, meaning and value.
"When we seek for connection, we restore the world to wholeness. Our seemly separate lives become meaningful as we discover how truly necessary we are to each other" Margret J Wheatley.