As a leadership advisor / PE Teacher / Coach / Dad / Husband I am faced with many demands on my time. I am sure this sounds familiar to many of you. I returned from the Canadian Student Leadership Conference in Kelowna last week. For conference highlights check out my Twitter feed or Facebook page. As a result of being gone for a week I was very behind at work with lots of deadlines to deal with. Special Ed plans had to be submitted, marking done, field trip forms filled out, and marks entered online among many other things. On top of that I was exhausted and emotionally a little drained after such a great experience in Kelowna. So after an unproductive Monday I started to chip away.
On Friday I arrived very early to get stuff done. About 30 minutes in two leadership students came into my office to pick something up. We started to visit and 30 minutes later I had got to know them better and maybe even taught them a couple of things. Now I was 30 minutes behind on my job list. Later that day in PE I had a student not changed and not wanting to participate. Instead of losing my mind on him and then moving on to the next thing I took some time to talk to him. The class activity allowed for me to sit with him and I learned about some of the big challenges he is facing. I believe these two conversations were the best things I did as a teacher that day.
We are faced with big demands on our time. We have to constantly choose between good things. I am working on putting people before forms getting completed etc. My goal is to keep trying to put people first and drop doing something good for something better!
Brent Dickson 