Three Strengths

It's the halfway point of TeachThought's Reflective Teacher 30-Day Blog Challenge!

Today's prompt:
"Name three strengths you have as an educator."

I think one strength I have is that I am open and willing to change.  Part of this comes from my compliant nature.  Ask me to do/try something, and I will.  But I also like shaking things up.  I need direction, I need to know how to make something new work for me, but when I finally have that "A-Ha" moment (that I enjoy seeing my students experience) I am all in.

A second strength is that I still love learning.  I still love to be challenged.  I WANT to know a better way to do what I'm doing.  I want to improve.  I still love learning about my craft, but I also still love learning about my subject.  I love seeing new connections in mathematics.  My training for my pre-AP classes by NMSI gave me several "lightbulb moments" about the math I teach that I honestly had never had before.

A third strength I think I have is my relationships with my students.  I'm pretty confident my students know I care about them and am on their side.  That I'm concerned about more than their math grade. I try real hard to give my challenging students a fresh start every day.  I want every student to know I see the potential inside them and the people they can become.

While there are always ways I can - and want to - improve as an educator, there are areas where I do OK.  But even those areas could get better.