A Long-Expected Journey

       As professional educators, we all travel along the road of professional development and we all, regardless of pre-planning, training, and/or our best intentions, hit at some point or another a rut — a difficult class, a student with a unique learning need, a new prep, or, in my case, a beloved ‘dead’ language that does not, at first glance, seem to lend itself to the contructivist, inquiry-based pedagogy that has served me so well in the history classroom. Don’t get me wrong — what I’m doing now works — most of the time, for most of my students. It’s the “most” part that doesn’t sit well. The day I stop aiming at 100% student success is the day I need to retire. I have ideas about how to get unstuck and I think know what I need to get unstuck. I even have guides who have tried variations of my ideas before. I have been blessed with these resources for a long time. So why am I still stuck? Because not all journeys are hard because the road is long or bumpy or otherwise treacherous. Sometimes it is the traveller and the leap of faith that is required to begin. It takes courage to just start moving when the destination, or the journey itself, is uncertain.

        That is why I am so grateful for the chance to be UTS’ representative for Cohort 21, season 5. I am a full-fledged participant in a program that has already, with the kind but firm hand of a parent, pushed me to take the first steps toward change — to embrace the Latin motto (to rework Immanuel Kant’s Enlightenment catchphrase) incipere aude! [dare to begin!]. The first face-to-face showed me not only that I am not alone on the journey, but that feeling uncomfortable or uneasy is not something to be avoided but embraced. As Garth and Justin made crystal clear, discomfort is the engine of progress. I just had to shift out of neutral to let the revving engine get me moving again. I can’t wait to see where this journey takes me, now that I have found the courage to hit the road again on this long-expected journey.