[ELTWeekly Volume 7, Issue 7 | February 23, 2015 | ISSN 0975-3036]
Elena Aguilar says, “Teachers make thousands of decisions each day, say the experts, as well as those of us who have been in the classroom. Making decisions can feel exhausting and draining, or efficient and effortless. Decisions are easier if we have clear guiding principles or ideals as we are making them. When these don’t exist or we haven’t articulated them, our decision-making process can be haphazard.
A motto is a powerful way to encapsulate the principles, values, and ideals which guide us as teachers and from which we make decisions. So teachers, what’s your motto in the classroom?
The Origins of My Teaching Motto
For some of us, our mottos may emerge from our own experiences in school — that’s certainly true in my case. I was born in London, England, to a Costa Rican man and a Jewish-American woman. We lived in a working-class suburb that, in the early 1970s, was rapidly changing due to immigration from the former British colonies”.