Teachers are the ultimate Swiss army knives. They have a very practical job to do that also requires them to pour their personality and heart into the work. They’re a lot like actors in that sense.
At a minimum, as teachers we must plant the seeds of doubt.
Not the bad kind of doubt either- the generous kind.
We have to plant seeds that begin to pick apart the destructive narratives that can form in our kids’ heads. You know the ones:
Other people can, but I can’t.
I’m not good enough.
I shouldn’t take up space.
I’m dumb.
I’m too loud.
Yes- at a minimum our job is to day by day plant seeds. Seeds that say these stories belong in the trash of the fiction section of a library that’s at a dump.
An outstanding teacher? Well, they don’t stop at planting these seeds.
They not only remove these stories by creating doubt in them, but they create empowering alternatives.
They give mountains of evidence, anecdotes, experiences and unquestionable proof that they can have it all.
Create doubt to collapse that which disempowers and build a ocean of evidence that tells them the truth:
You can do anything.
