Things are always at their best in the beginning.
-Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
In an earlier post, I acknowledged that teachers often lose enthusiasm and a sense of satisfaction at school as early as three months into the year. So, if things are always best at the beginning, how do we keep things fresh?
The answer is both simple but difficult to execute: We need to continually re-create the conditions that existed at the beginning. In many cases, we had an ideal in mind (ie…expectations). If we re-create the condition for expectation,as an example, we need to review what we said we expect as well as what we actually believe. If the two are in conflict, we need to start anew. But most of the time we simply need to hold ourselves accountable to our ideals (and expectations). Sounds funny to read it so simply put but if we’re honest with ourselves, oftentimes the conflict/dissatisfaction/frustration that we are experiencing is that we lost track of those ideals along the way (for a variety of reasons suggested in that previous post).
If we want success and a renewed sense of purpose in the classroom and for our students, we need to continually review what we do and insist that what we do matches both what we believe and what we expect which as a composite is our Ideal.
Finally, expect resistance. Resistance will come from students always. In a sense it’s their job to resist our expectations. SO, it’s tenacity in the long run that will keep things fresh. First the tenacity to hold fast to our ideals/beliefs/expectations and second, to re-orient students in the direction of them repeatedly as if it were the first day of school every day.
The accounting firm Accenture has a neat little phrase: “Expectation Gap”. They use the term to explain the phenomenon of returned consumer electronics for one. It has been discovered that only 20% of returned products are actually defective or broken, though the costumer said they were.
