Motivation is an important part of a teacher’s day-to-day life as he or she needs to feel motivation in order to manage a classroom, engage students, and work with families and the community.

It’s no secret that teaching is one of the most demanding professions out there, and ASCD member and National-Board Certified member Roxanna Elden has some tips for her fellow peers who could use some help reigniting motivation and staying centered.

1. Personal Time is for Personal Life. Elden knows that classroom tasks can seem daunting and can create the feeling that something always needs to be done, but she urges her peers to ensure that personal times remains personal time. "For the kids' sake and your own, mornings should always feel like the start of a new day, and Mondays should always feel like the beginning of a new week,” she says.

2. Put Smaller Tasks on the To-Do List. In order to avoid creating unnecessary stress, Elden recommends her peers limit to-do lists to smaller, manageable tasks as opposed to big, lofty goals that can create the illusion they’ll never be done. “Print student test scores,” she says, is a better to-do list item then “analyze student data and form long-term plans for each student.”

"Remember that your goal, when putting something on your list, is to cross it off.”

3. Avoid Negative Conversations. Although it might be tempting to let off steam in the teacher’s lounge and discouraging to talk to he teacher who’s “doing a fantastic job and can’t wait to tell you about it,” Elden urges teachers to avoid negative conversations in lieu for the positive.

"Just remember—productive conversations comfort rather than overwhelm. Pay attention to which types of discussions drag you down. Then, look for ways to cut them short, tune them out, or avoid them altogether,”she says.

4. There Is No One-Size-Fits-All. In order to stay motivated, it is important to recognize that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to being an effective teacher. " The good news is that many different traits make a good teacher. No one has them all, and some of them can even contradict one another. Your goal is not to conceal your weaknesses or disguise them as strengths; it is to identify your true strengths and use them to reinforce potential weak spots.”

Read Elden’s full post here.

Article by Nicole Gorman, Education World Contributor

11/10/2015