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PART 2

DEVELOPING HEART

Essential Heartprint Question: Are you an inspiring person with the day-to-day energy required to be fully engaged in your work life?

We cannot dream of a utopia in which all arrangements are ideal and everyone is flawless. Life is tumultuous—an endless losing and regaining of balance, a continuous struggle, never an assured victory…. Every important battle is fought and re-fought. We need to develop a resilient, indomitable morale that enables us to face those realities and still strive for every ounce of energy to prevail.

—John W. Gardner

In part 2, “E Is for Engagement,” we explore the role that energy and effort play in your pursuit of a fully formed and exceptional professional life. What are the heartprint actions you can take and the conditions you create if you choose to be fully engaged in your work life every day? Will you choose to fight and re-fight every battle? Will you choose to use and reuse every ounce of energy and effort necessary to positively impact children and adults? Will you choose to become great at managing your energy resources?

Will you choose?

You and I have a lot of influence. That influence manifests itself in the person we become and the high positive energy we bring to work each day. In the following seven chapters, you will discover that energy and not time is the human capital you need to develop and protect if you wish to live a fully engaged and grace-filled work life.

And, you might be surprised, but you will discover that the vast majority of adults in our profession is not fully engaged in its work. This can damage the culture for learning in your school or district. In a 2014 report, Gallup states:

Disengaged teachers are less likely to bring the energy, insights, and resilience that effective teaching requires to the classroom. They are less likely to build the kind of positive, caring relationships with their students that form the emotional core of the learning process.³⁴

In other words, full engagement, effort, and positive energy at work are necessary and never-ending improvement pursuits for every one of us when we choose education as our profession. This includes administrators too. Imagine if we rewrote the Gallup quote and just changed a few words (italicized):

“Disengaged administrators are less likely to bring the energy, insights, and resilience that effective teaching requires for the school culture. They are less likely to build the kind of positive, caring relationships with their teachers that form the emotional core of the learning process.”

If you and I are not currently able to locate a positive, high-energy state in our daily teaching and leading lives, then we are expected to be mindful of it, nurture it, and define it until it becomes part of who we are as professionals. It is my intent in these chapters to provide some insight into how to grow in your full and positive engagement as an educator—each and every day.

As we lead a more purposeful professional life, a life committed to some of the happiness factors listed in part 1, we are more likely to move toward a fully engaged professional life. Strangely, however, you can score yourself high on the happiness criteria, find yourself somewhat satisfied by your work as a teacher and leader, and still be noncommittal toward high engagement with your work life.

MY HEART PRINT

Thus, part 2 provides a road map to help you stay emotionally connected to the work of your profession.

Do you wonder from time to time what would possibly compel students or colleagues to follow you? I know I did. Early in my teaching career, I distinctly remember sitting in my classroom late one night after a basketball practice, imagining I was a student in my own class and wondering, “Would I even enjoy being led by me? Am I really an engaging and inspiring teacher to my students?” The answer at the time was a little frustrating. I just wasn’t completely sure I could say yes. I liked teaching, but the job often overwhelmed me.

In the next seven chapters, we will go on a journey in pursuit of the energy balance necessary to pursue a professional life that becomes inspiring to others.

We will connect to strategies that prevent our drift away from full engagement at work, clarify the time-energy dilemma faced in the pressure and pace of daily life, learn to become grittier, and examine how to use our own personal stories to inspire others.

After all, it is why we became teachers and leaders, is it not?

To get started, consider two work engagement questions.

1. Do you care so much about teaching students well that you are willing to stay committed to teaching and give it your best energy and effort every day?

2. Are you still in love with teaching and leading others? More important, do you believe you are currently fully engaged in your work?