A friend of mine wrote a piece about how mothers need to support each other. We teachers need to do the same thing. We nurture our students and forget to nurture ourselves and each other. We are all in this together and choose the same path because we share the same passion. Working together should be a joy, not a fearful trek through an obstacle course of misunderestimation, one-up-manship, gossip, and negativity.

We spend so much time focusing on healing our students’ dysfunctions and neuroses that we forget our own… and we become intolerant of it in others. But choosing teaching as a career means we are constantly learning; none of us is ‘finished’ yet. We must hold each other’s professional journey within the same cradle of compassion that catapults our students into the sun. Remember this:

“Everyone has at least one story that will stop your heart.”-Claudia Shear