Sept 7, 2019—What are your core values as a teacher; the three qualities of self that you strive to maintain at all cost? How did you come to this understanding? Through experience or scholarly study? Have those values been consistent across time? Would an observer agree or disagree that your teaching corresponds to those core commitments? What makes you uniquely you in your classroom? I’ve been recently reflecting on my core values as an educator. The trigger was a leadership retreat. The facilitator, for pre-work, sent everyone a handout inviting us to identify our core values. The working theory was that once we had individually identified our values that we could synthesize them into a collective list and from that list identify three to five themes or values defining our work. We never quite achieved the final goal but the activity did help me identify my core values. My top three values are: flourishing, relationships, and Love. There are certainly a number of sub-themes radiating out from each primary value but I think they all fit under these three core values.
By flourishing I mean things like growth, joy, change, curiosity, organic, and dynamic. It can take varying forms in accordance with the needs and talents of a particular person. Flourishing for one student can have different manifestations than flourishing for another student. But the unifying element is movement toward wholeness and fuller notions of self. Assignments in my classes that favor student choice and differentiation are more consistent with my value of flourishing than assignments that are pre-set and deterministic in their outcome according to my opinions and views.
Relationships are all about connections and honoring the inherent worth of the other. It is an acknowledgement that the individual “I” is problematic. The true-self exists only in relation to others; change the partners that one interacts with and notions of “I” change as well. This is well known in classrooms where students are frequently code switching to accommodate the “I” to the specific context the teacher has established. Yet, at the same time there are certain inherent qualities to the true-self that are less transient. But those attributes are best identified in the company of others; a community that names the deep gifts of self and checks false perceptions. In my classroom I work to build community and relationships that include people as well as texts. I encourage students to enter their readings with a sense that they are in direct conversation with the ideas the author is putting forward. I invite them to “hear” the words in the text that connect with the heart of their learning-self because it is through that unique connection that a relationship can form and support learning.
Love is both a standalone core value and the matrix within which flourishing and relationships find meaning and purpose. \Love is that aspect of learning and classroom spaces that draws the learner toward something greater than self. It invites learners to experience emotions like curiosity, passion, heart-break, grace, and commitment. It helps to be committed—deeply in love—with content when the nature of learning bogs down or becomes confusing. Love binds things together in a mutual relationship of two “others” seeking ways to flourish while realizing that self-flourishing is contingent on the flourishing of the other. Love in the classroom can find expression in ideas, knowing a colleague well enough to predict their stance on a subject, giving a colleague the grace to let them change their ideas, and a class-wide shared sense of mutual commitment to sticking with a tough text that challenges superficial notions of self.
During the retreat the facilitator presented a framework for organizing core values that is based on three questions; 1) why do you act a certain way, or the ultimate goal you hope to achieve?; 2) how will you go about working toward your why through discreet activities?; and 3) what do those values look like as a finished product, the wholeness of the work? When I organize my three core values to align with the three questions I find the following to be true. My why is Love. I’m at my best as an educator when my curriculum and instruction sets a climate of learning that transcends the ordinary. A classroom culture where ego, commodification, and competition is displaced by a sense of shared connection to something greater than self. Love inspires courage and fearlessness to explore, change, and hold firm with fidelity to truths. The how of my instruction, the ways I work toward Love, are relationships. They materialize in an array of activities involving students, text, classroom settings, and me. I encourage students to listen to the “voice” of the text. To hear how words and ideas in a reading are speaking to them, seeking a relationship of engagement. During instructional breaks we always have food, we gather around the table of fellowship and share stories of the day. We even pursue topics raised earlier in the class. Relationships are the micro-activities building toward the what. When combined into a collective whole the what, the evident object, of my core values is flourishing. The classroom is alive with positive energy, collectively and individually, inviting inner integrity to become external and vibrant. A student who spontaneously shares a deep moment of learning and understanding, connecting concepts and personal experiences in novel ways, is flourishing. They are becoming a new person, a truer version of self. Such expressions of transcendence elicit feelings of awe and anticipation of what might come next.
What are your core values? Can you winnow them down to three? How might those values map onto a framework of why, how, and what? If presented with your core values would your students concur or would they name a different set of core values? What the features of your instructional context that make it easy or hard to enact your core values?