I’m standing at the station looking behind me and then to the front. Where am I going?  Without thought I step forward and board the train car. Heading forward not knowing where this train will take me. All I know is stagnation does not ignite passion, and honestly, it just feels right. I think to myself, I must be in Japan and this must be the infamous Bullet Train.  But it only feels this way.

People and packed stations whiz by me, faces mostly unrecognizable. Ready to board their train, ready to move in their chosen direction. On the train, clear but unrecognizable faces are too moving forward, moving toward their own destination.

I chat with these people. I share my stories and they share theirs. After talking with one, I stir up another discussion. This action continues to repeat over and over again. I find myself watching new people board this train. They ask me for my life stories and I oblige. This train car is getting busier and busier and before you know it I am brushing shoulders with all sorts of commuters. I pursue this connection, as I am so naïve to think we are all moving together towards the same destination.  All I know is that these strangers are my kind of strangers.  I don’t care about their background, all I know is they are moving progressively.  I quickly realize some of these visitors have done this journey before while others are new, like me.

These strangers quickly become part of my journey, part of the ride that is slowly becoming less hazy and less arcane.  The train doesn’t slow down, yet the faces and the stations become clearer. I see some stops and think I need to visit there one day; I see others and simply say no, that’s not for me. But together these stops and these strangers are making the final destination feel closer and less obscure. 

Then, not knowing why, I step off the train. And now I stand on a platform filled with people all seeking some sort of direction and some train that will take them there. I brush shoulders with these aliens, I listen and I talk. I gather knowledge of this stop, take what I can and then board another train. I do this action over and over again gathering knowledge. Some of the experiences are bad and useless but mostly good and enlightening. I then about face and board another train.

Then while hanging on tight to the handrail it dawns on me, this train, this moment, is right where I want and need to be.  These strangers are not strangers but rather colleagues. The stations are not stations but rather workshops, blurry at first, but now clearly guiding my direction and feeding my passion. These train cars are my classrooms, filled with all sorts of different children. These people, these places, helping me find myself, feeding my passions and helping me to find my direction-forward!

The wild ride of being a teacher and life-long learner has all sorts of twists and turns. It is fast-paced, ever changing and overwhelming at times.  It may take time to board your train but when you do it is the most rewarding ride you will ever take! 

A while back I had a thought. A thought that went like this, “I want to be a teacher.” This thought came to me when I was running a summer golf camp for kids.  At that time my university courses had me on route to become a physiotherapist. The next day I stormed into the guidance counselor’s office and said, “Change of plans, what courses do I need to take?” Just over a year later I was sitting in a desk in the University of British Columbia education building en route to becoming a teacher. There I learned a lot of very valuable information and gathered a plethora of resources. They taught me how to write a good unit plan, lesson plan and IEP. They taught me how to write reports, letters to parents and comments to students. They taught me how to assess students using different models and methods. However, they failed to teach me the most important aspect of teaching. That is the human side of a very difficult, stressful and demanding occupation.  They failed to tell me about how some days are nothing but a grind. They failed to tell me about the everyday bliss that occurs when a classroom environment is just right. Most of all they failed to teach me ways to find... well… me!

You see, what the education program didn’t teach me is how to deal with every nuance that goes on in the classroom. It also never taught me ways to discover my passion.  When I say passion, I mean PASSION! We all have the passion to teach. We all have the passion to foster growth in a child. But what we need, and what I never had, is something to say “THIS IS WHAT DRIVES ME! THIS IS WHAT SHAPES MY PRACTICE!” At the start of my teaching career if a parent asked me, “What do you do?” I would have had a very simple response, “I teach.” This is a very different answer than what I would say now. But those early years of teaching weren’t a complete waste for me.  During those years, I got puked on, had my hair pulled, was jumped on by students overcome with joy and was even hugged by a parent saying, “Thank you!” I too had highs and lows. One minute I was overcome with joy and feeling proud and then the next moment I was on Craigslist looking for other jobs while having tears in my eyes thinking “I hate my job.” Self reflection of those moments in time has helped shape my pedagogy into what it is today.

To my students who sat in the desks over the first few years of my career, I’m sorry if I didn’t meet your individual needs. I dotted my “I’s” and crossed my “T’s.” I did everything that my education program taught me to do, perhaps but I failed you still. I didn’t mean to, I just didn’t know any other way.  I just hope that you, despite me, are flourishing in high school.

But over time I found me! It took a while but now I am here. You see it took me time to see and feel what I am all about. I created a stepping stone approach to find me. I made a list of twelve educators who inspire me, and as bad as this may sound, then I made a list of twelve educators whom I wouldn’t want to be like. Then I became a sponge and soaked up everything that these twelve positive role models did. Sorry to those educators for stealing everything in your back pocket, it’s not my fault, I only wanted to be like you!

I would talk to these educators and take mental notes. If they liked a program, then the next day I was trying the program. When they bragged about a lesson, the next day I borrowed the lesson. When they discussed the benefits of certain platforms, then you guessed it, the next day I was on these platforms. I was not only a sponge but also a thief. Sorry about that!

Well, I’m not really sorry. Due to my somewhat mischievous actions I bettered myself and my students. I learned to create a personalized learning network, or PLN.  This is a network, both face-to-face and online, where you challenge, help and lean on others. A friend of mine, Hugh McDonald, introduced me to Twitter, which in my opinion is the most important learning tool on the planet. Now almost everything I believe in stems from Twitter. Books, videos, lessons, blogs, and more that I accumulate from Twitter continue to evolve my pedagogy and better my practice. How could it not? Being a sponge and a thief, Twitter gives me even more people to steal from while exposing me to even more people I want to emulate. The kids who share the same classroom with me are now more engaged, have higher self-confidence and enjoy a deeper more meaningful classroom all because of my PLN.  

This is a cyclical world. Don’t worry, I’m not going Jerry McGuire on you.  I believe that good ideas and good deeds need to be paid forward. I don’t want new teachers taking years to find themselves, like I did. So when the opportunity came to have a student teacher, I jumped at the opportunity. Time to pay it forward! So now that I have a student teacher in my classroom I am already challenging her. I have asked her to put all those “dotting I’s and crossing T’s” lessons aside. Instead I show her the benefits of running a classroom where self-worth and intrinsic motivation must be present before any curriculum is taught. Up until this point, this idea was probably totally foreign to her. I teach her to go with the flow and not get stuck on meeting every learning objective, which in practice is often unattainable. I have gotten her and her cohort on Twitter, and have even gotten her to attend a Twitter ed-chat. And lastly I ask her, “What drives you?” “What gets you out of bed with a kick in your step?” I don’t accept the answer “teaching.” See, if a parent was to ask me now, “What do you do?” I would say, “I’m a passionate member of an upbeat, confident, risk-taking, child first, global community and it’s AWESOME!”  Now, I don’t blame UBC, as this is a learn-as-you-go profession.  They did prepare me to run a classroom, but some things need to be learned individually.  We need to weave our own paths, even if you need to ride some coattails along the way!

For the second straight year my class has participated in the Global Read Aloud Project. For the second straight year my class was engrossed in a fantastic novel.

In this last month my class went travelling. Taking non-stop “flights” from Vancouver to Connecticut with the odd stop in Nevada, Texas, Oregon, Rhode Island and Christ Church, New Zealand.  The travels left my kids engaged yet drained. See, the students in my grade 7 class have had their emotions toiled with. One moment they are as high as a skyscraper and then in the next moment they are as low as the ocean floor. Their emotions were on the Global Read Aloud rollercoaster. From joy to sadness and everything in between, my class has lived side-by-side with their new best friend. A young girl, almost the same age as them, named Carley Conners. Well, if you ask my class they will tell you they prefer calling her Carley Murphy.

One of the goals of this project was to connect students globally. But it turns out it has done much more. It has connected my students to reading, to learning and to their emotions. The novel we are reading, “One for the Murphys”, has connected my kids so much that they plead to continue the story, and get upset when we need to stop to go to play volleyball. The ups and downs in the novel, and in particular the everyday life of Carley Connors, have changed the classroom atmosphere. One moment there is euphoria in my room and in the next moment there are tears.  The engagement in my room has never been higher, and it is due to this project and this amazing novel.  

Today my class learned that they will have the opportunity to speak with the author Lynda Mullaly Hunt tomorrow morning. When I announced it the reaction in my class paralleled last years Olympic gold medal goal by the Canadian women’s hockey team.  The kids, who can’t stop talking about the novel, have the chance to speak with the lady who created their new best friend. Tomorrow morning my kids are showing up early to school. Not to play sports or help out around the school, but instead to read!  How awesome is that!

Twenty-five individual kids enter my classroom daily. Twenty-five students with different needs, interests and learning styles. Twenty-five kids who all share one very important need. To be accepted!  We don’t choose to be sad, angry and disconnected. Seemingly microscopic moments add up and shape our emotional state. I am no expert in this field by any means. I don’t have a PhD, Masters, or even Bachelors in Psychology. I am just a regular teacher, cognizant of my classroom.

We can teach these boys and girls the curriculum with flare. We can differentiate our teaching to accommodate each learner. We can be engaging, funny, clever, and witty. You can even throw technology at them and say, “Play! Show me the world!” But if you never address the heart of the child, you will continue to look in the back of the room and see a child who stares down, slouches and talks quietly. We all have these students. They aren’t the kids who answer questions, shooting their arms to the sky as if their favourite team just scored a goal. They aren’t the kids who volunteer to do every class job possible. They aren’t the kids who others look at and say I want to hang out with him. So, unfairly they continue to build up the brick wall that they continue to willingly, but not by choice, hide behind.

So here is where us as leaders, mentors, teachers and guardians can pull their trowel away from their hands and help them kick the wall down. We have the power to boost morale. Brene Brown states that the only difference between low and high self-esteem is the belief that you are worthy.  Worthy of being loved, worthy of friendship, worthy of…

Time to reminisce, as Happy Gilmore said, “Go to your happy place!” What came to your mind? For me, it was small acts of kindness, people going out of their way to make me feel worthy. Family, friends, classmates, TEACHERS all create these small moments that shape our own perceptions.  You have the potential to change a child’s emotional state every day.

I believe that self-esteem leads to motivation and, in turn, motivation leads to engagement. I also believe engagement narrates ones learning. The curriculum is there to be learned, however, without positive self-esteem a student’s brain is a pre-soaked sponge of negativity, filled with thoughts of worthlessness. The sponge is full before it enters the classroom. The sponge can’t absorb the curriculum, no matter how well it is delivered.  

As a teacher we have the capability to squeeze out that sponge and provide our students with a blank slate for learning, so to speak. In the morning wait at your door, give high fives and compliment them on their new red elastics on their braces. Refrain from grabbing a red pen and circling repetitive grammatical errors. Rather, grab a green pen and compliment them on their creativity. Let them know that nobody is perfect but your use of a comma here and that period there IS perfect! Don’t just throw a ‘heard it all before comment’ like “nobody is better at being you than you.” But rather, if they like to graffiti their binder, give them some white out and a spare binder and say, “Nobody is as good as you when it comes to decorating, can you decorate mine?” In other words, do whatever you can to make all your students smile and feel worthy. We can only control the classroom environment, and within the classroom we should strive to create moments of positivity, moments of self-expression, moments where they can truly show what they can do. Knowing that they are worthy of their teacher’s approval will lift up those slouching shoulders. Help increase self-esteem and maybe you too will get a boy come to you and say, “Thank you for letting me be me! And thank you for letting me walk the catwalk!”

   "I am so bad at art", "I can't draw", "I hate math", "I hope he makes the test easy." Over and over we hear these quotes and others from our students. They said these comments in grade 1 and they continue it throughout the rest of their schooling years. They cling on to what they are good at and shy away from things they are less confident in. It's like a kid who never progresses away from the dribbling drills in soccer learned at age 5 into more complex skills because he doesn't have confidence to pass or shoot. Last time I checked, kids at age 15 don't aspire to stand in one spot on the soccer field dribbling on their own. Then why do we as teachers not do more to rid these fixed mindsets in a classroom? 
    Carol Dweck, in her book Mindset, states that we have one of two common mindsets, fixed and growth. The fixed mindset does not take risks, cares about extrinsic outcomes and consequences and simply does not grow because they don't challenge themselves. Conversely, the growth mindset constantly take risks. They set goals with the intent to overcome them and LEARN. 
    However, the funny thing is that these fixed minded students aren't fixed at home. Whether we like it or not, many of our students go home and play video games. Actually, these kids think all day about the video game they will play when they go home after school. They think about how they will defeat the next level of Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto. They don't think about going home to beat level 1 for the 400th time. They willingly take the challenge to take on the next level knowing they may get defeated. They are exhibiting the growth mindset. So, in their favourite activity these seemingly fixed mindset students are showing growth. 
    When is the last time you watched a kid play a video game? Did they know you were in the room? The answer is probably no! Why? Because they were so intrinsically engaged that they couldn't take their eyes off the task. They didn't need someone to tell them when to begin and stop or when to go left or right. They figured it out on their own. See, when they are engaged they shape their own learning.
    So, as educators, what can we take from the video game/child interaction? Well to begin, when playing their video game, these students are not merely compliant, attentive and connected, but rather they are impassioned. A classroom needs to provide this. An environment where students don't just connect with the curriculum but rather they connect in a way where what they are learning gives them satisfaction at a personal level. Here is why it is essential that your classroom meets the needs of all children. Let them ignite old flames and discover new passions. 
   With guidance and modelling, allow the students to weave their learning through the different levels of the curriculum. Allow them to choose the "dragon" which they must make a proposal on how to slay. Daniel Pink states that humans feel most engaged when they feel they are being intrinsically creative. So allow kids to see the learning outcomes in advance, make a proposal on how they will creatively defeat these outcomes, carry out their scheme to rule the world, share their progress, and then give them time to reflect on the effectiveness of all their steps in their conquering of their latest level.  So instead of standing at the front of the room and telling your students how to beat the evil Zurg, give your students autonomy. Show them trust and they will find their own method to defeat these rulers of evil empires. 
   As teachers we think daily of how to better the learning of all children we come into contact with. We create units, lessons and activities to make sure that our students are progressing along with the prescribed learning outcomes. But there are always students who just simply don't. To all, but especially these students, ask them these questions; "Are you as motivated to improve at school as you are to beat video games?"  "Why do you think learning to beat levels is different than learning at school?" "If school was run like a video game do you think you can win?" and finally "How would you win?" Allow students to delve into their video game passion, and they might just take down Godzilla!