As I have mentioned I have just finished the High Holiday period. This is a time according to Jewish tradition that we are judged and our fate for the coming year is determined. It is an emotional time and one that leads to a lot of introspection and thinking about what truly is important.
Based on different conversation over the last two days I have also been thinking about how we as educators and leaders are judged. What are the factors that others use to judge us.
Are we judged by:
- How many twitter followers we have
- How many times we have been published in journals
- How many books we have written
- How many keynote addresses we have given
This month is Connected educators month. What is a connected a educator?
If you are not on twitter or don't blog does that mean that you are not connected?
If you only connect with 20 people and not 200 are you not connected?
I don't have the answers.
If YOU MATTER is truly a mission which I believe it is that this idea needs to permeate our entire lives not just how we act towards our students but how we act towards our friends and coworkers as well.
How many of us truly connect even with people we work with on a daily basis?
Do we truly care about the well being of our friends and coworkers?
Do we support our friends and are we truly for them?
Are we happy for their success or are we jealous?
Do we accept our friends and coworkers for who they are or do we judge them?
We have to take care of ourselves first and my needs and the needs of my family come first. I agree and understand but in those other moments do we really feel that YOU MATTER mission in our lives?
I will be honest. I have tried to kickoff my consulting business and it has been hard. I have never given a keynote, I have not yet published a book and I have not attended a lot of edcamps or conferences. I do believe on some level I am judged for this. I am not against doing any of the above but it just hasn't happened. And Yes at times I am somewhat jealous or wonder why others seem to have it so it easy and have written multiple books and given multiple keynotes.
I am human and have these feelings. At the same time I am truly happy and supportive of my friends who are accomplishing so much and adding so much to the field and making lives of students better which is the key.
My PLN is great and value their support and friendship and wish them all only success. I am saying this to myself as well but we need to be careful how we judge and define others. We are in this profession because we care about others and we each may do things in our own unique way, that doesn't make one way better than the other.
Lets remember that the YOU MATTER mission applies to us educators as well.
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