Читать книгу HEART! - Timothy D. Kanold - Страница 10

PART 1

DEVELOPING HEART

Essential Heartprint Question:

Are you a person of passion, positive impact, and perseverance for the education profession?

There is no passion to be found playing small—in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.

—Nelson Mandela

In part 1 of this book, we explore the role happiness plays in our pursuit of a fully formed professional life. We explore the happiness—positive emotion-passion connection—in our day-to-day teaching and leading life, and we explore the role of compassion and love in living a more meaningful professional life.

Without passion for the profession or the desire to become a person of positive influence, character, and perseverance, your heartprint on others could result in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living, as Nelson Mandela reminds us in the opening quote.⁵

You should carefully consider the role of happiness in the workplace as you join the teaching profession. Does our profession fire you up and align your personal passion with the nature of an educator’s work life? Does your positive emotional state serve you well through the grind of each and every day?

In this first part of the book, we explore the elements of the happiness research, what it feels like to become a wholehearted teacher of others, with the essential and necessary challenge of providing compassion, hope, and stability to others.

You will be asked about the love you have for your work and the issues in your life worth weeping over. We examine what experts can tell us about happiness and then try to apply it to the journey of our professional work and life.

If you teach young elementary school students or are in a stage of your personal life that includes younger children, you most likely know Pharrell Williams’s song “Happy.” First released as part of the Despicable Me 2 movie soundtrack, the words seem relevant to the context for this part of the book.

Here are two lines from the chorus:

Because I’m happy

Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof⁶

You can almost hear the tune in your head and sing along, right? If not, go to iTunes (www.apple.com/itunes) and check it out! This specific part of the chorus resonated with my heart the loudest: “Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof.” You see, in order to be meaningful, our professional life needs to feel like a room without a roof: unlimited potential and possibilities as we grow together. No ceiling on our potential and our achievement as educators, no limits to how expert we could become as practitioners within a profession we love.

In part 1, “H Is for Happiness,” we examine actions that help us to reconnect to the meaning of our life and our career as educators and professionals. We examine steps to stay connected to our calling toward the profession and maintain joy in the journey—a joy that makes it so much more than just a job—as the days unfold, the seasons come and go, and the promise of a great career rests in the rearview mirror. The following chapters describe how to find and maintain that joy!