"Life In The 21st Century"

...when you can learn from your elders.

So today I had the absolute pleasure of interviewing a woman who is 85 years young and truly the matriarch of our school. If I had only thought to do this with my own grandparents who are now deceased, there'd be some record of my family history. But what 10 year old walks around with a video camera? So I'm not going beat myself up.

Anyway, last week, our matriarch approached me for computer training and in turn I asked if she'd be interested in an on-camera, videotaped interview to record the history of our school for an upcoming video presentation I'm working on.

Of course, she was hesitant, but once she got on a roll she was great. We spent nearly an hour chatting, laughing and calming her fear of the camera. You probably have noticed I'm not using her name. That's because I didn't ask her, didn't want to confuse her and I didn't want to try to explain blogs; although ironically, I'm sure she'd have the best blog going.

So our matriarch had many words of wisdom to share but one that sticks out to me is, "you cannot be an egotist and a teacher. Egotists need to be on stage and teachers need to leave their own ego at home and nurture a multi-flowered garden of students. Each flower in the garden needs attention. Wow...how right is she?" We have such an important role in educating the "entire child" and to -NOT- damage the goods (so to speak) with our words and frustrations.

The summer is a great time for me to self-reflect on the role I play in education and to keep the mantra going...."it's not about me."...."it's not about me."
...."it's not about me."
...."it's not about me."
...."it's not about me."
...."it's not about me."
...."it's not about me."
...."it's not about me."
...."it's not about me."
...."it's not about me."