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Friday, November 30, 2012

A Crucial Conversation

This is a short post, but a story I felt needed to be shared:

During 2nd Block, I was completing an Informal Observation of a Career teacher with decades (literally) of experience.  After the conclusion of the observation, as students were working collaboratively, we began discussing various teachers in regards to peer observations.

He mentioned someone in his department of which he spoke very highly of.  In fact, our conversation persuaded the following Tweet:

It's quite a compliment when a veteran teacher describes a beginning teacher as "someone who was born to teach". 

I was in total agreement, as even though she is in her third-year, she is in the top 10% of those I have ever worked with or supervised in her given content-area.  If I were to create a staff from scratch, she would be one of the first teachers I would encourage to join.

Later in the day, I passed by the Beginning Teacher in the hallway and stopped her.  I told her about the compliment payed by the veteran teacher and how impressed I was for the veteran teacher to go out of their way to let me know.

She paused, looked at me, clearly emotional, and said, "Mr. Smith, I have been strongly considering if I really want to continue teaching." 

This is coming from a fantastic teacher; she's one of my "go to" teachers (previous post: Who Are Your Go To Teachers?).

More importantly, she followed this up with:

"I really needed to hear that.  Thank you."

Now that's a crucial conversation.

Thanks for reading and follow me @CSmithGoBlue.

CS

The opinions shared in this blog belong to Craig Smith     and do not represent the school or district in which he works.

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