Finding My Motivations

As I read Dan Myer's latest post titled "This Blog is Counterproductive," I realized that in some way I empathized with him.

I mentioned before that my teaching had become an island. My comparisons for how I was doing were only made with others in my department, let alone in my whole school or even my whole state. My department head regularly told me that I worked too hard and put too much into my teaching and that I needed to back down. My dean of academics told me that he thought I was best calculus teacher in the state, which I fully knew was not true. Yet, those statements made me become complacent. Then I noticed the status quo kept slipping lower and lower.

It is in the reading of blogs like Dan Myer's, Kate Nowak, and Sam Shah that I have been reminded that I had once been inspired to be the best teacher I could be. Not the best in my school or the best in my state or the best against anyone else. I wanted to give everything I could to my students academically and emotionally. I may borrow the ideas of the great three but I am now working on making my own again. I hope Dan realizes that his blog has been anything but counterproductive.