Each month, author Jess Cleeves shares 12 of her most important points of advice on reclaiming passion.
A values-centered practice is one in which a practitioner can clearly identify how their guiding values motivate, impact, and support their instructional decisions.
Put most directly, practicing in congruence with your values is your surest way to escape demoralization.
Excerpt from Planning to Stay:
Once you’ve acknowledged that your feelings impact your professionalism, you’ve got more capacity to become more sensitive to your feelings and to use them as indicators, as invitations to explore what changes you might want to make. If you aren’t feeling how you had hoped to, it’s a chance to wonder if you’re being infringed upon by perfectionism, say, or a paternalistic mandate that you’ve accidentally internalized. Being able to understand—and be in conversation with—your feelings will support you to be less reactive and more responsive. …
As you build your vision for yourself in your reflexive examination, it helps to consider what you’ll want to know, feel, and be able to do. …
In order for this rigorous values exploration to work, on returning to your life and your classroom, your ideological shift must be evident. It doesn’t have to be obvious, but you have to be able to point out to yourself when, during the course of your days, you are actively serving your values, and not those imposed upon you. …
Excerpt from Planning to Stay © 2022 Jess Cleeves.
