Being realistic.

No matter how prepared you are, there’s one thing that I can absolutely guarantee: if you’re on the river of life, it’s likely you’re going to hit a few rocks. 
That’s not being negative; that’s being practical, realistic and accurate. 
The key is that when you do run aground, instead of beating yourself up for being such a “failure,” remember that there are no failures in life. There are only results. 
If you didn’t get the results you wanted, learn from this experience so that you have references about how to make better decisions in the future.

Reasons for being an Educator.

Personally, I stumbled into teaching. Then, I got hooked. I got completely addicted to the joys, the thrills, the challenges and the fulfilment that teaching and being an educator entails.

My reasons are simple: I love to share. I love to help. I love to learn. I love being in a position to inspire and influence others positively. I love being able to make an impact.

Being a educator has provided me with the platform to do all of these and I can honestly say that, in spite of the challenges and the pressures involved, I absolutely do not want to be or do anything else.

Generally, most educators have some pretty selfless and inspiring reasons for going into education.

Recently, Scholastic and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation released a survey where more than 20,000 teachers were asked various questions about how they feel about the job, including why they were motivated to become teachers. Their answers show that indeed, teaching and educating is a noble profession, filling us with optimism about education.

According to the survey, an overwhelming majority of teachers said their top reasons for going into education were "to make a difference in children's lives," "to share my love of learning and teaching" and "to help students reach their full potential." Barely any said they went into teaching "for the earning potential" or for "no particular reason."


Here's a full breakdown of how teachers responded to the survey questions:



We only wish everyone had such positive reasons for choosing a profession.

If you're an educator, share with us your reasons for going into the field of education. 

And, if not, share with us why you chose your present profession.

3 Ways to Make Meaningful Connections with Your Students | Edutopia

Educators' Lounge.

Being a teacher/educator is as exciting and fulfilling as anyone with a good head on their shoulders can imagine. Sometimes, if not always, you find out that to effectively share knowledge, to help others in their quest for learning and development, educators need to connect with their students.

3 Ways to Make Meaningful Connections with Your Students | Edutopia

Share with us the ways you best connect with your students.

Positivity and Leadership: 3 steps to getting it right.

1.    Listening and empathy.

Showing empathy to people helps them develop a stable base, so they can feel comfortable to explore and take risks. This can lead to more creativity, more effectiveness and better problem-solving skills.

Research shows that the part of our brains that focuses on goals actually inhibits the part that helps us to understand and empathize with others.

2.    A caring boss is more important than what you earn.

In a survey of employees at seven hundred companies, the majority said that a caring boss was more important to them than how much they earned. 
Making your employees feel heard and understood can actually improve their physical health as well as their mental well-being. 
"Workers who feel unfairly criticized, or whose boss will not listen to their problems, have a rate of coronary heart disease 30 percent higher than those who feel treated fairly."

Simply listening to people helps them to offload their negative feelings and release tension. Carrying around anxiety or frustration can hinder an employee’s performance, so try to tap into how they’re feeling on a regular basis.

3.    Make interpersonal chemistry a priority.

"Our sense of engagement and satisfaction at work results in large part from the hundreds and hundreds of daily interactions we have while there, whether with a supervisor, colleagues, or customers."

 Making a priority of how well your people get along is something that can not be overemphasized, Especially in bigger teams, where you may not interact with each employee as often, ensuring that there is positive chemistry among team members could make a big difference to the overall company culture.

"The accumulation and frequency of positive versus negative moments largely determines our satisfaction and ability to perform; small exchanges—a compliment on work well done, a word of support after a setback—add up to how we feel on the job." And most times, how we feel on the job, goes a long way in how we do the job.

Wikipedia according to Turnitin

Wikipedia in the classroom

Following the link above, you can find an interesting approach to how Wikipedia is addressed nowadays in the classroom and the potential benefits it may have.

This brief article has been published by Turnitin, mainly a powerful tool to detect students' plagiarism, but also a rich source of innovative teaching ideas.

The ones who understand failures.

Big dreams and big goals can only be realized as long as you are ready to fail – again and again.  And, you see, the most successful people are those who fail the most. With each failure you grow, you become bigger, you learn new things and you get one step closer to reaching your goals.

One thing is absolutely sure, if you REALLY want to succeed in life, if you want to do something special, if you want to fulfil your dreams… failure becomes inevitable.

But, failing is not so much the problem as the attitude you have towards it. With the right attitude, failure could be surmounted and even be welcome. People who have succeeded in anything know that…

•  Failure is an integral part on the way to success and self realization. Don't sulk, pout or whine about it. Expect it, accept it, and welcome it.
• Every time you fail,  you become stronger, and wiser. You are better able to identify what didn’t work.
• Failure is a great teacher and it allows you to learn some of the most valuable life lessons.
• Each failure brings you one step closer to reaching your goals.
• Whenever you step outside the comfort zone and whenever you try something new, failure becomes inevitable.
• Failure teaches you that a certain approach may not be ideal for a specific situation and that there are better approaches.
• Making mistakes is not a big deal as long as you learn from them and avoid repeating them.
• Successful people will never laugh at you or judge you when you fail, because they have already been there and they know about the valuable lessons you can learn from failure
• Each time you fail, your fear of failure becomes smaller, which allows you to take on even bigger challenges.
•  No matter how often you fail, you are not a failure as long as you don’t give up.

If you are still stuck in your old paradigm of “failing is bad and should be avoided by all means”,  if you're still being held back by your fear of failure, then you ought to read some autobiographies of highly successful people to learn how they “failed” their way to success. You might be surprised at how often they failed until they finally excelled, the lessons their failures taught them and subsequently the different and rather positive attitude they have adopted towards failure.

How do you deal with failures? Do you have a specific approaches to quickly get over your failures and to continue on the road to succeed. 

These examples should help us understand the benefits of failing as well as the power of our determination to succeed, and encourage us to go on trying until we conquer our fears and thrive in our pursuits.

Homework; The Elephant in the room

Educators' Lounge


Ask anyone on the street, no matter their age, about homework and you are bound to get an instant reaction. Vietnam acid-like flashbacks of a time gone by, or simply from the other day a school run through the mind. The drill sergeant of the classroom demanding more; more time, more effort and more commitment.

This unforgiving Mamal in the room has to be viewed from all perspectives, from Educators to Learners, Parental Guardians to Human Resources Dept and from Companies to Education Institutions. However this particular White Elephant can be boiled down to simply,
"Should we be setting and/or doing Homework?"

As Learners go back to school and we begin to negotiate balancing family time and take-home assignments, we relate and share that, Learners are stressed out and exhausted by the volume of homework they receive (so, too, are parents who say they've had to become drill sergeants in their own home to get it all done). Other parents say their kids aren't getting enough or any homework at all and they've had to create their own to keep their kids challenged. Some parents complained that their kids' homework is more busy work than helpful work to improve academic performance, while others said their kids' homework is just right -- and critical to competing in a global economy.
The concept of homework is so ingrained in our culture that people can't and won't think about what it might be like if we just stopped making our kids do homework, refuse to enforce more than 10 minutes of homework per grade level for each grade of learner, which is the guideline recommended by both the National PTA and the National Education Association, can significantly impact a Learner.

Homework: How much, how often?

On the other side of the debate is Ann Gunty, a mom of four in Flagstaff, Arizona, who doesn't understand -- or support -- the notion that children should have less homework or no homework at all.
"I just don't think it's the right thing to say, 'Oh, they don't need any homework. It's just too much. They should be out playing and adults relaxing after a hard days of work. They should only go to school,' " Gunty states. "Making it less and less and less is contributing to us being less competitive worldwide." Gunty's kids, who attend a school that runs from grade 5 through 12, get between one to two hours of homework, including 30 math problems every night, which she feels is appropriate, beneficial (her kids' school enjoys high test scores and strong college placement) and not intrusive on their ability to still be kids or enjoy family time.

Mozart Saint Cyr, a father or two in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, takes it bit further: He doesn't think kids today get enough homework and are so distracted by video games and social media that they're going downhill. He says parents should demand more from their kids: "If the school provided extra homework, some parents would force their kids to do (it)."

Author: Nicholas Blunsum

Please tell us your opinion and where you stand on this debate, find us on our website at www.jogglelounge.com, visit us on our Facebook page www.facebook.com/jogglelounge, you can also follow us on Twitter @jogglelounge for up-to-date Coaching Tips and Tricks.
*information and interviews sourced from CNN.