Yesterday, I shared Simon Sinek’s company rules. I got really great feedback from my friend Audrey – a fabulous teacher in Yokohama. Of her own teaching and classroom environment, Audrey described her ‘rules’:
As for me and my own teaching, “Take chances, make mistakes, get messy, and look for connections” always works! ~ Audrey Brown
On Twitter I follow @sethsaid – a tweeter who tweets Seth Godin quotes (ahhh…music to my ears!). This morning’s tweet, I turned into the picture above (thanks also to Creative Commons and Shankar Shiv for the photo). I liked it for it’s simplicity (the quote and the photo) and it also made me think of my response to Audrey’s comment:
I love your ideas Audrey! I think all teachers could come up with a pretty cool list for themselves – and then to see what the kids come up with….wouldn’t it be interesting to make your own list as a teacher but not show the kids and then a couple of months into the year, show them Simon’s example and ask them what they think the list would look like for their class. It would be interesting to compare. As teachers, we would know that if they said “Have the right answer, always look good, listen to the teacher” that we might have some work to do. That sounds like the best sort of ‘appraisal system’ I have heard of: comparing if what we say we do and believe in actually matches what we really do.
A little random and wordy but I think you get the idea – do we practice what we preach?
Then comes in Seth.
Can we present who we are and our position on education in eight words or less? Audrey can (with a little tweaking of ‘look for connections’ to ‘make connections’) and as someone who has seen her in action, I can attest that hanging her sign in the window would be an authentic reflection of her practice as a teacher. Now I just have to figure out my position! What’s yours?
sonya terborg 