Three minutes.

One minute we are our own best supporters and in another minute our own worst critics.

I was speaking with a colleague yesterday about the ways we all carry our insecurities with us and check ourselves, or the way we perceive ourselves, against new experiences, new relationships, and even new accomplishments. Even when an achievement brings us great pride, we question our performance. We wonder if we have truly measured up. When I was in early elementary school grades, or really in any grade, a sticker on a paper or quiz well done stimulated nothing but a bright spark of pride. Today an accolade is sometimes more complicated. I hate to think of that same gold star provoking an insecure questioning within that first grader regarding whether or not she deserved it, but somewhere in my growth and education this happened. Maybe we need fewer gold stars and more questions asked: What have you learned from this? How do you know?

Reflection.

In our start of school faculty meeting yesterday morning, our principal ended with a reflection exercise of asking us to imagine ourselves watching our students walk across the stage in May at graduation. He asked us to ask ourselves these questions: How do I want to feel at this moment about the past school year? What do I want to be proud of? When my seniors walk into their last first day of high school on Tuesday, I want to ask them the same question about May. I wish I had started my whole graduate degree with the same exercise, but as I complete it this week I can imagine the answer I would have given. I would have said that I wanted to gain a deeper knowledge of content as a professional in the field of English, not just as a teacher, and that this enrichment would help me to improve my curriculum and my students’ classroom experience. I would have said that I wanted to further develop my skills in analysis and interpretation and stretch my abilities in order to broaden the possibilities for my future career. Now, at the end of my program, I can say that these things have indeed happened, and creating this public portfolio has been one measure of it. As a compilation of my learning, it is both a source of that aforementioned pride as well as a topic for personal criticism. Its public nature makes this both daring and frightening, but its creation has made me a more thoughtful learner.

Our own best supporters one minute and our own worst critics in the next.

In the third minute, we put our work out to a public audience despite all hesitations, and we see how it goes.