But First…A Word About Career Choices - What They Are, and Are Not
- emilycrement
- Aug 1
- 5 min read
What we choose to do as a career says a lot about who we are as people… what we value, where our strengths lie, and what we contribute to the world around us. Through our career choices, whatever they might be, we are each given an opportunity to make a positive impact on others. This is true if you bag items at the grocery store (who among us hasn’t had their day made a little brighter with some friendly conversation and a warm smile?) help people buy and sell houses (our realtor helped us get into our dream home,) or work as a nurse in an emergency room (literally saving lives!). And because we spend so much time working, many of us begin to identify with our chosen professions.
At the time of this writing, I serve as the assistant superintendent in a school district outside of Chicago, Illinois. While I work every day to continue learning and growing, and to develop the skills and dispositions that will allow me to be successful in my role, I do feel well-suited to the work.
That said, there are many, many professions that I would NOT be good at and WOULD NOT particularly enjoy. Take, for example, a pastry chef. To be a pastry chef, one has to
Have a refined sense of taste, which I currently do not have. With my eyes closed, I probably wouldn’t be able to vanilla-olive oil creation. Or if I could tell the difference between a boxed vanilla cake mix, and a rosemary-taste the difference, I would probably be satisfied adding some rosemary, vanilla, and olive oil to a boxed mix (whichever one was on sale, most likely) and calling it a day.
Value precision. Yeah, not my style. If I am adding baking soda to something, I feel okay to eyeball it or use a regular old teaspoon. You will never find me leveling out a measuring spoon with a butter knife. Not in a million years.
Work unconventional hours, including early mornings, late nights, weekends and holidays. As an educator, I have certainly worked long hours, but on New Year's Eve, you can pretty much expect me to be right where I want to be: in bed by 10:00pm.
Does the fact that I would not make a good pastry chef mean that I am not a good person? Of course not! I believe I have a good moral compass, try to do the right thing, and honor my parents and grandparents by living out the values I with which I was raised.
Do you have to be a good person to be a good educator? I would argue, yes. To take responsibility for the learning of another is a selfless act. It means that during your work day, you put many of your own needs aside to help another person live the best life they can through education. That goes for educators at all ends of the spectrum. Teachers are responsible for the learning of their students, and administrators are responsible for the learning of their students AND their staff.
If it is reasonable to assume that you should be a good person in order to be an effective teacher, does the opposite hold true? NO!! Not being an effective teacher doesn’t mean you aren’t a good person. All-too-often, I think we make that mistake, which is why, I believe, we end up with too many teachers who aren’t that effective.
When providing support to a staff member who is not meeting expectations, I have said the following many times. “If this staff member were my next door neighbor, I would be delighted. I would happily have over-the-fence conversations with them, and would offer to pull their garbage cans to and from the curb if they were on vacation.”
In the context of a next-door neighbor, this person would be solid gold. But that is not the context that connects us.
I’ve heard it said that the problem with education in America isn’t that it is bad, it is that it is variable. In my roles of instructional coach, school principal, and assistant superintendent, I can attest to this variability. I’ve seen some of the most outstanding instruction you can imagine right down the hall from instruction that is clearly sub-standard. Why does this happen? I believe that, in part, we have equated being a good teacher with being a good person, and because the majority of people who work in education ARE good people, we stop short of of providing honest feedback, having hard conversations, being vulnerable enough to admit weaknesses, taking risks, and improving in our practices.
Teachers might think, “I am a good person and I care about students. I am always friendly to my students and try to help them as much as I can. Why should I reach out to the instructional coach?”
Administrators might think, “My new staff member is super sweet and is so pleasant whenever I talk with her. It would really crush her to know that her classroom management isn’t effective, so I am going to avoid that conversation.” Or worse yet (which I have actually heard an administrator say!), “She is a single mom. She just went through a nasty divorce and is raising three kids on her own. She needs this job.” Good person? Yes. Effective teacher? Not necessarily.
My point is that every living person has inherent worth and dignity. Every person has the capacity to contribute meaningfully to the lives of others and to earn money in doing so. Not every person should be a teacher or an administrator.
To underscore this point because it will be critical to doing the work I will set forth going forward, I will share this story. At the end of one school year, a teacher who had recently retired came to a board meeting to make a public comment. Her intention was to advocate on behalf of the school where she had spent half her lifetime working, and she expressed a concern that there seemed to have been more non-tenured teachers who were not recommended for renewal. She said, quite passionately, “They tried their best and they were told their best wasn’t good enough!”
I mean… yes!?! Trying one’s best does not guarantee job security. By that logic, I would like to be a professional quarterback! (For your reference, I am a 46 year old woman, standing 5’4” with sensible clogs on). According to NFL.com, the highest paid quarterback in the NFL makes $60 million per year. If I promise to try my best, can I be a quarterback too? Dallas Cowboys, here I come!
The hard part for early career teachers is that it takes consistent, disciplined practice to learn how to be effective! It’s unlikely that they will be good right out of the gate, so they have to take feedback with grace and commit to improving with dedication. It is critical that, as an organization, we develop a healthy gut for having conversations about strengths, vulnerabilities, and opportunities for improvement! The importance of these conversations is not just to improve capabilities, but the regularity of the practice increases the speed to mastery at the same time. Your students don’t have the luxury of time either. (If you haven’t read my first blog post about Professional Gut Checks, you probably should before going forward.)
In the next blog post, I will give you an outline of the Gut Check Framework, and how it can help early career teachers and administrators make healthy sound decisions about career trajectory and retention in a way that is transparent, supportive, and honors the inherent worth and dignity of all involved!
Deeper Dive |
Now, Discover Your Strengths: The Revolutionary Gallup Program That Shows You How to Develop Your Unique Talents and Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton |