What would you do if you weren't a teacher?

Yesterday's post about helping our learners find their element challenged me to consider this question.......

Hmmmmm......... this is tough. I LOVE being an educator. I love the learners, I love the creativity, I love the variety, I love the changing technologies, I love constantly learning and I love the relationships that we work to form with our learners, their parents and with other educators.

So, what would I do if I chose for some reason to give up my role in the classroom? I have been thinking a lot about finding one's element. Sir Ken Robinson describes your element as the place where your aptitudes or talents and your passions meet.

Image by D.Richards, inspired by Sir Ken Robinson's, The Element

What would "the element" be for you? I find this question very, very difficult to answer. The irony is that I can see exactly what my family members' elements might be......

My daughter is deeply passionate about computer science and animated movies. She has a real thirst for learning more about animation and story creation. She gets on lynda.com and works through tutorials to teach herself Blender in her spare time. She watches Disney movies in a very academic way, passionately pointing out where both hand-drawn and computer-generated techniques have been merged. She even tracked down an animator from Dreamworks on my twitter account and quizzed her about the software she uses. I can see if she continues on this track, she'll end up working for an animation company and I wouldn't put it past her to start her own storyboarding and animation company.

Heroes/ Mentors are so important for following our dreams.  

My 8 year old son LOVES rugby the way I love dark chocolate! He is also very passionate and good at maths and spends a lot of time making books of statistics in the rugby season...things like who carried the ball the most during a game and who achieved the longest drop kick. Totally beyond me. He is also mad keen on geography and I think that his current dream job would be as a travelling statistician for the All Blacks- even better would be if he could also play First Five! That'd be perfect for him! He'd be in his element!

My husband is incredibly creative, a very talented artist with a deep passion for healthy city building (how ironic that we live in Christchurch, a city desperately in need of people just like him) Exactly six days ago, I think he found his element when he moved from working with engineers and people who look at the world in a very different way to working for a new firm of urban designers and landscape architects- people who care deeply about creating a vibrant and dynamic city with the well-being of its people at its very heart. It is truly awesome to see him having found his element. His enthusiasm for his work has increased exponentially and it's wonderful to see and be part of that.

So, what is my element? When I asked my family what they thought I'd do for a profession if I wasn't a teacher, my husband answered that he thought I'd either own my own florist shop (hmmm....not a morning person so that's probably NOT going to happen!) or open a children's bookshop, matching children to the perfect book. That sounds very cool- I would LOVE that! My son answered that he thought I'd be a person that helps people or perhaps a lawyer- he and I are quite skilled are arguing our points! My daughter answered that she thought I'd have a job helping people identify their passions....how ironic that I can't identify my own element but can clearly see possibilities for others.

So what would you do if you weren't an educator? Hmmm.....I don't have the answer; perhaps that's because I've already found it.....in my classroom.

Leave me a comment, I'd love to hear what you'd do if you weren't in education.

Elmo and The Element

Last night, for family movie night, we watched a really fantastic documentary on Apple Tv. Our eleven year old daughter hasn't stopped talking about it. It was called Being Elmo and was the story of Kevin Clash, the puppeteer who brought us Sesame Street's much-loved Elmo.

The documentary tells the story of a young boy growing up in a working class neighbourhood in Baltimore. From a very young age, he was passionate about puppetry, becoming obsessed with Jim Henson's muppets as seen on a new show at the time, Sesame Street. He spent many hours designing and sewing puppets and creating their personas. His dream was to work for Jim Henson and the documentary tells the inspiring story of his path to making his dream come to fruition.

 Kevin didn't have support at school, in fact he was bullied for his obsession with puppets, but what he did have were two loving parents who were strong advocates for him, encouraging and supporting him every step of the way despite the fact that wanting to become a puppeteer was an unusual dream in 1970s Baltimore.

This story resonated with me because our school is committed to helping our learners find their passions. We strive to help them identify their strengths and the things that they love doing and to celebrate each girl's uniqueness, giving them the time and space they need to really explore and become fully immersed in their passions. Each year group has a different form of passion-based learning so our girls are constantly reflecting on who they are and what makes them tick? In Year 8, our primary medium for passion-based learning is the incredible Passion Project. These are a full year self-led inquiry into one of their passions and seeing what the girls create is the hands-down highlight of my school year.

There are so many things I love about these projects and for so many reasons. My greatest fear is that education is becoming too standardised, that we are turning our learners into carbon copies of one another. I know we can all think of schools that pride themselves on creating the XXXX boy or the XXXX girl . I strive, in my classroom to do exactly the opposite, to enable and empower each of my learners to be unique and to celebrate that unique identity by becoming the very best version of themselves. I want my learners to be individuals who are aware of their strengths and are working towards finding that thing that Sir Ken Robinson refers to as The Element, the place where their strengths and passions meet.

Kevin Clash found his element and then he put his head down and walked straight towards it. Sure, the line to get there was wiggly, not straight but he never gave up, always keeping his eyes on the prize, that illusive job as Jim Henson's puppeteer.

I can't wait to share "Being Elmo" with my Year 8s.

I have lots more to say about this documentary but my 28 minutes is up. I thought I'd leave you with an Elmo clip that was a favourite of my son's not all that long ago. I hope you enjoy it!