What I love most about teaching

The James Barrie quote in my  signature line at the bottom of all my emails does not surprise anyone.  It is evident that I love what I do for work and that I feel very fortunate to have found a profession  where I can't tell the difference between work and play.

So when I saw today's   Te@ch Thought's 30 day blogging challenge  prompt

                                      "The thing that you love the most about teaching." 

 it was not difficult for me to relate to it.

I LOVE TEACHING because 

I LOVE  'LEARNING" and 

I LOVE watching "LEARNING" happen and 

I LOVE  creating an environment where LEARNING happens

It wasn't  until I had raised 3 very creative children and became more familiar with the creative process and what drives it that I started to understand that what I loved about teaching is that I got to CREATE everyday.  I got to CREATE learning opportunities.  

I use to question my love for my work every time someone told me that I was working too hard and I should not work so much.   But  recently,  during an interview as an honoree for Vermont Works for Women's Labor of Love Celebration,  I started to understand my labor of love in a different way.  It occurred to me that nobody ever told my children who are professional musicians that they should not 'work' so much.  They played music for fun, they played music for pay,  but nobody ever tells them to stop playing music.  I've watched them make a life for themselves where they get to 'create' music for a living.    I'm often asked how where my boys got their creative talents, and I use to always answer "Not from me!   Sister Edmund, told me to just move my lips in chorus class, because I was too short to move to the back row."    But over the years, I've come to realize that my boys and I have a lot in common,  we each get to create every day and find creative ways to produce something that 'works' the way we envision it.   Creating an environment where all the different complex pieces that contribute to great learning has some similarities to creating good music.

Honoree Lucie deLaBruere Listen to the interview Download the audio In creating great music, you have to understand the foundation and the music theory and be able to apply it.  You have to have vision and be able to negotiate all the complex parts that will produce the vision.  In creating great learning, you have to understand the foundation and the learning theory and be able to apply it.  You have to have vision and be able to negotiate all the complex parts that will produce the vision.  Lucky me!  I love teaching because I LOVE learning and creating great learning! #reflectiveteacher