I just returned from Elevating and Celebrating Effective Teaching and Teachers or ECET2 as it's called by those in the know. (SHOUTOUT) It was a weekend conference hosted by The Gates Foundation in San Diego. I was celebrated as a leader in my field and treated like my voice mattered. As you can see by the picture below, we were treated very well!
Nothing like palm trees to make you feel important. San Diego is such a gorgeous place!
Teacher's salaries don't often allow for seaside resorts and balconies.
My first time seeing the pacific!
I learned so much about maker spaces and social justice and empowering young men of color, but the main thing I left thinking about was raising my voice as an educator. Telling my story.
But I'm stuck. See, no one wants to hear my story. I can share my story about how I ended up teaching well. I can make you laugh and make you cry with narratives about students and antics over the last seven years. I've perfected it to a lovely dinner party appropriate 5-7 minutes. But that is not the story I want to tell. Those are stories that are really not mine to tell.
I'm reminded of my garden club of boys with emotional disabilities learning how to love and nurture through planing and growing tomato plants, but isn't that their story instead of mine to tell. Isn't my job as an educator to teach them to tell their stories instead of telling it for them? I don't know. I'm hoping to start telling my education story soon. I'd like to start sharing it here on this blog, but I have to do the hard work of telling my story in a way that will help inspire and motivate other teachers. However, I'm not willing to steal the narratives from my students. Their stories are amazing tales of resilience and passion. Fantastic tales of struggle and woe. Boring tales of relatable mediocrity. But, ultimately not mine to tell. As I start to extract their stories from my own, I ask to to follow along.
