The Mindful Teacher's Blog

  Einstein highlights the importance of values because of their profound impact on our lives. I wrote, in self reflection a few years back- "knowledge of self is super important.  I've always said this to students, friends, and mentees but when faced with the question of something at the core of who we are, I struggled to find honest answers."  The question, What are my personal values?  Which behaviors and values do I rely on from others?  Over time I was able to muster up some commonly stated values, but they felt less than authentic to me because I had not honestly reflected on this fundamentally important question.    A value is a tightly held belief from which we act.  Our core values are often enduring beliefs that can be influenced in part by culture, religion, and community.  In the context of our whole selves that we bring to our students each day, our values are the roots that give rise to our thoughts, which bear fruit to our actio...

  The self is complex.  The concept of self includes many parts working together to make up who we are in relation to ourselves, others, and how we show up in the world through our habits and ways of being.  Depth psychologists such as Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung worked to offer up three parts of the self- the id, ego, and superego. While the theory behind interactions between the subconscious and conscious parts of who we are may have varied between the two, suffice it to say that the self is dynamic and ever-changing.  Many others since Freud and Jung continue to offer perspective on the compound nature of who we are. I remember in my third year as a classroom teacher, sitting in an overly packed classroom with all of my colleagues after an exhausting day of teaching; and the principal stating, "as teachers, we need to learn how to leave our stuff at the door!"  Upon hearing this, it seemed significant though it took me a great deal of contemplation to learn ...

  Socrates said it best, “Know Thyself”!   These two simple words are loaded with timeless wisdom that have such profound impact on our lives.   Consider for a moment just a loose run down of a “typical” morning in the life of an educator; it includes, early mornings of preparing for a classroom full of students in the midst of faulty copy machines, last minute coverages, and an overwhelming cascade of email requests and demands.   Add to this the required flexibility to deal with whatever arrives in your classroom at any given moment, not withstanding the surprise observation on the day everyone is anxious to leave for vacation.   There are many circumstances in the work day that are outside of our control, and a critical step to reclaiming power over our lives is remembering that we are not victims to external forces and have the ability to shift our awareness   to our inner experiences.   Parker J. Palmer proclaims a simple premise in his book “Th...