Whatever things you go through, you stay true to who you are and your core values.
—Sophie Gregoire Trudeau
Being called to yet another meeting, with an already full to-do list. Getting word that a new student is starting in your classroom when you feel as if you’ve finally solidified the community feeling for the students. Analyzing data points and realizing additional interventions need to be considered and not knowing the next steps to take yet.
Sound familiar? Situations like these are real and prevalent in our educational communities. The hustle and bustle of our day-to-day as educators is building, and over time, it is taking a toll on us all. And in these moments of overwhelming distress, an ominous cloud spreads out among our core values, those same values that brought us into our profession with an open mind and a smile in our hearts. What are we to do?!
When we sense this overwhelming feeling among our teachers, it’s time to pause. It’s time to pause and recalibrate our purpose, our intentions, our values as educators. Instead of business as usual during a scheduled collaboration session, try hitting the Pause button and switching it up for the educators in your community by engaging them in a reflective exercise.
Start with a Question
Pose a question to your team of educators. Consider using an essential question that will lead them to deeper thinking about the core values that brought them into this profession. A question I used recently is “What do you bring with you when you walk through the doors of our school to contribute to our community of learners?”
Supply the Materials and Think Time
Provide each member of the team with five sticky notes and prompt them to write one idea on each note. Follow this up with five to seven minutes of personal reflection time. During this personal reflection time, allow the silence to break through the ominous cloud casting shadows over your core values.
Share and Connect with Each Other
Once the five to seven minutes is up, invite a team member to start the conversation with something he or she brings to school every day (besides coffee!). One might start off by saying something like, “I bring with me an imagination for what could be.”
As others listen, they look for similarities in their responses and connect. Another may say, “I also bring creativity to school with me.” As the ideas continue to be shared, matched, and differentiated, place them on a board centered in your space. As you are placing the sticky note responses, strategically gather and place the similar responses in one location on the board and continue to place other different responses around the board as they fill the air. This will help everyone visualize those values they share and those they may differ on. Other responses that you may hear added, among others, are collaboration, humor, empathy, dedication, and curiosity.
Debrief with a Team Reflection
The final step to this exercise is to debrief with the team by reflecting on how the exercise affected your mindset and helped put things back into perspective. The purpose of this reflection is to remind the educators that they had reasons for entering this profession and to shine a light on those reasons when darkness seems to cloud their bright skies.
Within 20 minutes, your team will be facing a board filled with core values. Focus your mind on the mood at this point in the exercise. The mood should feel lighter during this reflection stage, perhaps because the ominous cloud covering your core values is passing and the glimmer of your core values is shining through. Here are some questions to help guide and support this team reflection:
- How does this exercise remind us of our core values?
- What are the core values that we share?
- Why is it important to raise awareness of the values we hold to be true in our hearts?
- Why is it important to see the values we share? To see the values on which we differ?
- How are we different, yet better together?
Values are like lighthouses. They are signals giving us direction, meaning and purpose.
—Recruiter Journal
When you start to sense that the educators you work with are feeling overwhelmed, remember to pause. We owe this to ourselves, to our teachers, and to the students entrusted to our care. Taking the time to reconnect with core values may be just what we need to reset and re-envision possibilities moving into a new day!
