Last

These past couple months I've blogged about several topics. BIG topics. I didn't even really scratch the surface of any one of them, but I got the wheels turning. The fact is that these topics can be taught, and it's important to realize this. They can be taught as long as they are valued and practiced. For example, Passion is not something that you can necessarily take a multiple choice test on, but it's something that can be ignited in the classroom and enhanced there so the students can leave that class a better more passionate person then when they came in. As for teachers, we need to consistently be checking ourselves to see if we are on board with these past topics. We need to grow in them and enhance them everyday. Teachers can do this by keeping up with hobbies, as well as starting new hobbies, attending conventions about things they are passionate about, etc. There's so much that we can all do, but HOW you do it is what sets each person apart!

Resilience

Presuming that all aspiring teachers attend a college or university in order to attain an education degree I'd say it's a fair assumption to say that at sometime or other, we've all been stressed. I truly think that the only way to prepare ourselves for the daily stresses of being a teacher is to learn how to deal with the daily stresses we have now in an effective way. Professors have the hard job of making our lives "difficult" per say. They should expect a lot from us, and because a lot of us take a lot of courses at once we end up having a lot of professors that expect a lot from us and only so many hours in a day. This=stress. We grow accustomed to lots of stuff to do and therefore it becomes the norm. Also, it would be helpful to hear guest speakers give advice on what exactly we can expect to fill our days and what will take up most of our time, this way we can be mentally prepared.
The numbers of people that change their profession only a few years in is very big. It's understandable, though. We can't expect to like everything we dive into. However, job-changing occurs largely because people were not aware what they were getting into. As teachers, the more we volunteer in classrooms and observe and student-teach, the more we will have an awareness of what we will be dealing with once we are in charge of a classroom of our own, and the more time you have to think if you really want to enter the field or not.