everyday hero
June 2008
As proud members of the teaching profession in an age when media prefers stories of failed teachers and scandalized schools, let us endeavor to remember our role as everyday hero. For every “newsworthy” story of a teacher or school that casts shame or doubt on our profession let us endeavor still to remember that there are hundreds of tales of everyday heroism, professionalism, and courage that exist at our individual schools alone. Ultimately, it up to us as advocates of public education to stand firm and strong in our beliefs, to elevate our profession every single day, and to both honor and serve the children we are called to educate.
Consider the following:
Love what you do. If you don’t love teaching, please leave teaching. If you don’t love your current situation, please do everything in your power to improve it. A former superintendent shared this with our district faculty one year, and I was shocked at the purity and simplicity of the message. I reflect upon it often, as I believe it to be the gold standard in teacher education, leadership, and mentoring.
Hold empathy and compassion close to your heart. Raising children, teaching children, and being a child — all these things can be difficult at times. Keep these qualities at the forefront of your thoughts, words, and actions when interacting with children, parents, and coworkers.
Remember to set personal goals as well as professional ones. Take the time to nurture a passion outside of school, if even only in a small way. Share your passion, and encourage your students and coworkers to do the same. Remember one of the most important components of being a teacher is never forgetting what it is like to be a learner.
Embrace professionalism, responsibility, and accountability and expect it to be the standard in your classroom, campus, and community.
View setbacks, mistakes, and failure differently. Failure, while unfortunate, frustrating, and usually avoidable, can be used to facilitate future growth and learning. Don’t be afraid of mistakes, but don’t excuse them away, either. Face them, help your students learn to face them, then find the path to success from failure. All students, regardless of their demographic group, need to be taught how to pick themselves up from failure and missteps; this requires positive role models and opportunities designed to turn the tide on failure.
Finally, congratulate yourself and those around you. You’ve taken up an important mantle, and no one understands the importance of what teachers do like teachers themselves. Remain an active and integral part of your campus and community, and continue to lift up the lives of the children you teach. And remember, you are an everyday hero.
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Copyright ©2008–2019 Carol J. Watson
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Content by Carol J. Watson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. The most prudent way to share this content is just provide a link.
about carol
Carol Watson is the Director of Fine Arts for Georgetown ISD in Georgetown, Texas. A teacher for 22 years, the majority of which were in Georgetown ISD teaching both elementary and secondary visual art, Ms. Watson also spent years simultaneously as a working artist in mixed media and lampworking.
Ms. Watson served on the board of Georgetown Art Works from 2008–2011, and chaired the 2010 Art Hop, sponsored by Georgetown Art Works. Currently, Ms. Watson serves as a member of the City of Georgetown’s Arts and Culture Advisory Board. Additionally, she is the Executive Director for the Georgetown Performing Arts Alliance, and current member of several arts education associations, including Texas Music Educators Association (TMEA), Texas Music Administrators Conference (TMAC), and Texas Art Education Association (TAEA). From 2010–2014 Ms. Watson served as a regional adjudicator for VASE, and as a state adjudicator from 2015-present.
In all of these roles, Ms. Watson has sought to make connections between children, education, arts, and the community at large. Carol graduated from West Texas State University in 1992 with a BS in Interdisciplinary Studies and from Lamar University with a M.Ed. in Education Administration in 2015.
Ms. Watson lives in Georgetown with her husband, three cats and a dog. As empty nesters, they celebrate their son from afar as he pursues his love of music performance and education at the University of North Texas, and they both also enjoy organic gardening, reading, jazz, and making art.
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Carol’s 2008 essays were originally written in TeX with PDF files generated with pdfTeX, converted to Markdown for this site.
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