Finding Your Life's Purpose

This post was originally shared on Mari Venturino and Justin Birckbilcher's Teach20s blog. They are creating a community of young educators and mentors and share on their blog and on Twitter with the hashtag #teach20s.

The post below is edited and partially excerpted from Creating Classroom Magic by the author.

Justin and Mari used the process described below to discover their professional identities.

Invest a few minutes in yourself and your future right now. Take time to reflect on and expand your dreams; define your life’s purpose as a professional identity statement; and share this statement with others.

Consider what you want to do in this world and who you want to impact. Think about how you can have the impact you desire. Allow your imagination to run wild, come up with Blue Sky ideas (don’t put a limit on yourself, allow your thoughts to drift as high as a big blue sky). After you have imagined the possibilities, it’s time to make your dream clear so that you can communicate it to others. Many companies and corporations create a vision statement to provide a clear description of a dream.

The professional identity statement you will create today states your purpose. It includes a set of ideas that describe the future state of your personal or professional life. Consider what the best case scenario is for five, ten, twenty or more years from now. Dream big. That is your professional identity statement, or your vision statement. For many years, the Walt Disney Company’s formal vision statement was: “We make people happy.” In recent years, it’s been changed to a much wordier statement that defines that purpose in an unnecessarily extended way. Ask almost any Disney employee and they’ll still tell you the vision of the company is those four simple word: “We make people happy.” I think that’s an extraordinary vision. Not only is it clear and concise, but it describes everything that Walt Disney aspired to do.

I discovered my life’s purpose, my own personal vision statement, nine years into my formal teaching career. I watched the ambitiously named “How to Know Your Life’s Purpose in 5 Minutes” TED Talk by film producer, Adam Leipzig (who, incidentally was an executive at Disney at one point in his career). In his talk, Adam asks five deceptively simple, but remarkably poignant questions. They led me to define my professional identity statement as a vision. You can do this right now. It could even take you less than five minutes, especially if you’ve given yourself time to dream.

Write something down as soon as you’re done reading these instructions. If you don’t love it, come back to it later.

Ask yourself:

• Who are you?
• What is the one thing you feel supremely qualified to provide to other people?
• Who do you do it for?
• What do these people want or need from you?
• How do they change or transform as a result of what you give them?

With those five questions, I defined my life’s purpose: I’m Shauna. I create safe, inspiring places for kids. They need someone who believes in them. I help them become the people they never knew they could be.

As an educator, your vision statement will likely reflect your desire to help others. “In order to make good on your chosen task, it’s important to have someone you want to do it for,” Walt Disney said, ”The greatest moments in life are not concerned with selfish achievement, but rather with the things we do for the people we love and esteem, and whose respect we need.”

Once you have a professional identity or vision statement, live it. Come back to it often. Share it. Post it - physically or online, or both. This week, share it on Twitter with the hashtag #teach20s. Consider doing what I did and using your vision statement as your profile description on your social media accounts.

  Your professional identity statement will help direct you when you’re feeling lost or don’t know what decision to make. You can refer back to it and modify it as your dreams change and grow. By defining your vision, you will find it easier to chart your path in life. Your vision is your definition of success. Reflect on your progress often and celebrate all the things you do to live your life’s purpose.

Reflect on your life's purpose. Guide your students to do the same. Share your thoughts below, on Justin and Mari's blog, on your own blog and/or on Twitter, using the hashtag #teach20s!

30-Day Blogging Challenge: Day 27: Holidays and Weekends

Day 27: What role do weekends and holidays play in your teaching?

Too much. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I have a lot of trouble turning of my teacher brain. That's probably good for my students, as I'm basically always thinking about them, but it's not always great for me. Or for my in-person relationships.

I spend a lot of time online, reading, watching, writing, planning and sharing. I like to be easily accessible to co-workers, parents and students (current and former). A lot of my "downtime" is spent up - reflecting, planning and thinking. That means I spent evenings, weekends and holidays working.

I have this ridiculously awesome team of people behind me (partner, friends, colleagues, professionals) and all of them push me to look at my life and find a better work-life balance. The problem is, my work IS my life. That might sound lame, but I really, truly, madly, deeply love what I do and love learning from others and pushing myself to be better.

Because I am aware of the potential to burn out, I try to listen to my team and take some time for pleasurable, happy-making activities. Even if my teacher-brain is still on, I value the time I spend tuned into real live human people who love me. I need to do a better job showing them that.

That said, my mom and Captain Handsome need me right now. The rest of my blog catch-up can wait!

30-Day Blogging Challenge: Day 21: Octopuses, Travelling, Disney, Puppets and Tech

Day 21: Do you have any hobbies/interests that you bring into your classroom teaching? Explain.

I'm into a lot of things. Most of them make their way into my classroom in one way or another. I can't really turn off my teacher brain, so even when I'm doing something that is happy-making for me, I'm thinking about how it can make things more engaging, innovative or educational for my students.

Octopuses: I have a lot of interesting octopus stories and facts because I'm fascinated by the eight-legged wonders. My students get used to hearing about octopuses and know, from the first day, that I'm in love with them (although, this year, it was slightly less apparent for them - usually I wear my custom-made octopus necklace on the first day. After a request to wear it on the last day last year, I broke it while dancing. I have to get it repaired so the Gladiator Snails can see it!). Over the years, I have collected (and been thoughtfully gifted) a number of octopuses that are displayed on a shelf in the room.

Tech: I love playing with new tech tools and toys and bring them into my classroom for my students to figure out along with me. I've learned about blogging, Sifteo tiles, iPads, Skype, Chromebooks, Sphero and MaKey MaKey with my students. Things that I can't get my hands on (like outrageously pricey Google Glass, drones and 3D printers), I share with my students through videos, articles and imaginative discussions.

Disney: This one has been more closeted in the past, but has come proudly to the forefront this year. Walt Disney has always been a hero and an inspiration for me and it's only in the past year that it became totally obvious how wonderfully his philosophies fit into mine in the classroom. Our EPCOTclass is modelled on Walt Disney's ideals of dreaming big, storytelling, creating magic, authentic collaboration and bravely going against the expected.
Once a student at the school where I currently teach, I signed out a lot of books from our school library, in the old fashioned way - on library cards in the back of books. A student last year discovered my name written in the back of a Walt Disney biography she signed out. I did a lot of projects on Walt as a kid.
(I am not totally blind to issues of corporate greed and sexism inherent in much of the Disney brand - but my students and I explored some of that in the past. Last year, my grade 5s wrote "Un-Disney Stories", by taking the narrow, sexist messages from Disney films and re-writing them for a modern audience, changing role models to appeal to all different kinds of kids!)

Puppets: I've always loved the idea popularized in "The Velveteen Rabbit", "Winnie the Pooh", "Toy Story" and other tales of stuffed animals coming to life on their own - especially while unwatched. Puppets give me the ability to make that happen in a tiny way (stop motion could make it happen, too...hmmm...future project?). I think Jim Henson's Muppets are so incredibly gorgeous, enchanting and alive that when I found "The Muppet Workshop" at FAO Schwarz in NYC, I nearly lost my mind. I created Norman several years ago and he lives in my classroom (he doesn't know Math, so we consider all the things he can't do and we try to teach him). Last year, Norman got a friend, a beautiful purple monster named Hedwig. She's shy about reading, but loves when students sit with her to read and learns from their efforts and confidence. Norman and Hedwig have become cherished (and hilarious) classmates.

Travelling: I LOVE to travel. I love sharing with my students about the way my perceptions of myself, my culture and the world change through my adventures. Getting to relive amazing journey by sharing stories with my students has been a gift.

Since my first year of teaching, I have gotten to know my students at the beginning of the year through "Pieces of Flair". We each bring in items that represent us as people and display them in our classroom, making it ours. This post is basically a list of (some of) my flair!

(NOTE: Yes, "pieces of flair" is an Office Space reference. Well done, friend. I often say that a good percentage of what I do in the classroom is to entertain myself. Flair is one example.)

It's wonderful to be able to share my passions with my students and learn about theirs. If teaching is all about relationships (which, honestly, it is), then building relationships with whole people (not just who they are in the context of a classroom) is crucial to reaching all students.