Leading and teaching. Not pretty.

I have been thinking about how leading is important to teaching.  These are the two images about leadership that have been popping up in my brain lately.   I confess that I found them through a recent search online about the topic.





It seems obvious, that to lead people well you need to be in the trenches, pulling with them.

Leading that way as a teacher, though, takes confidence because it can expose your most vulnerable spots.  In the past year I have put the wrong formulas on the board, mispoken about concepts, assigned work way under and way over skill levels, and stumbled through spreadsheets.

This year is my second year teaching at Sturgis, but my twentieth year of teaching in my career.  At my former school, I was the expert, the one writing curriculum, giving workshops to other teachers, the go to person for teaching middle school math.  My certification is in math for grades 6-12.  At Sturgis, I teach 9th and 12 graders in an IB curriculum.  After 15 + years of working in middle schools, a lot of my math skills had deteriorated.

Now, coming to the end of two years of teaching high school again, I can feel my math coming back, and growing.  In the past couple of years, I moved from Puerto Rico, bought a house here on Cape Cod, got my three kids situated in their new schools and environment, AND started my new job teaching high school.  I did none of these things gracefully.  I did none of these things even close to perfectly.  Most of the time I have felt like I have been just surviving the process.  I was ashamed for how ungracefully I was leading my family and my students through the challenges of the past couple of years.

HOWEVER.... perhaps that is how leading actually goes.

Teaching by leading that way-- struggling through the concepts, tripping, getting dirty-- it is pretty distressing.  I am starting to realize that mMAYBE I haven't done permanent damage by moving up the learning curve alongside my kids (both my biological kids and my professional kids).

I hope that each year I will be stronger so that I can pull harder for my family and my students.  Which I guess is better than pushing them.  Leading vs bossing.