Living for the future or stuck in the past, where is the present?

As a teacher, I have found my passion ebbs and flows. I have all these great ideas I want to enact, but then the day to day life of teaching consumes the ambitions and dreams and I begin to teach in the finite mindset. I no longer look at my students for the potential of who they can become 5, 10, 20 years from now. But instead my mind closes and I view them only in completion of today's work or next week’s test. I look at them in a finite way. This not only limits my beliefs but it limits what my students are able to showcase to me and their unlimited potential is shrunk to how well they can remember systems of equations and the rules of exponential notation.

If we think too small term, we limit our kids future potential. We close our minds and find that’s specific lesson more important than anything else.

If we think in the present, that’s where connection with out students comes. We’re able to hear them, see them, try and understand where their outburst, defiance, lack of effort, all come from.

If we think for the future, we leave our minds open to possibilities. Possibilities we can envision for our students. Their possibilities might even be so big we can’t even imagine them yet. If we’re able to leave THAT door open, then our role changes. We are no longer dragging them through each current door trying to get their feet moving. Instead, the door to the future is left open, they are guided through and it in turn leads to more doors that they will be able to choose to walk through.

Soak in the metaphor. But understand that this can look like in schools:

If teachers can start asking themselves what can they provide for their students so that a year, 5, 10, 20 years from now they have become better people because of the lessons they’ve learned, that’s a win.

You know students don’t retain every math concept they learn. Students do retain the life lessons, feelings, emotions, belief systems you created for them and with them.

What will your student remember learning from you?