What Could Growth Look Like for Educators?
What Could Growth Look Like for Educators?
As a child, I was conventionally ambitious. I wanted to do big things, make a big impact. I dreamed of fame, adventure, and reaching the highest possible rung on whatever ladder I climbed. Working with children didn’t quite fit into my masterplan.
Catharsis
Skipping the storytelling of cosmic conspiracies and career pivots, let me get to the point: I discovered what true joy felt like in the company of a giggling, inquisitive, and brutally honest group of human beings—children.
Since then, growth has never meant the same.
A Deeper Dive
"Children are human beings to whom respect is due, superior to us by reason of their innocence and of the greater possibilities of their future."
~ Maria Montessori
In my early years as an experiential educator working on the periphery of school systems, I believed I was filling a gap in child development. (Some naive arrogance may be spotted here).
It wasn’t that curricula were poorly designed. It was that, in practice, we often fail to treat children as beings deserving of our authenticity and depth.
Eight years of experiential practice—and a journey through parallel training—eventually led me into a school classroom. There, I worked to integrate the principles that had guided my facilitation into my teaching-learning environment and pedagogy:
Participant agency
Connection before correction
Emotional investment
Reflection as a counterpart to action
These weren’t strategies. They were the foundations of a pedagogy that honoured the learner, not just the lesson.
What are the Children Indicating?
Across economic, cultural, and social contexts, children and youth often tell me the same thing:
They’re struggling to find adults they can trust.
They crave connection with adults who are fair, fun, authentic, and rational—qualities that lay the groundwork for safety and trust. In their absence, they turn to strangers online. Or worse, they start believing that shallow, transactional connection is simply how the world works.
This isn’t just a crisis of guidance. It’s a loss of possibility.
Our Learning Opportunities as Educators
“Consciously we teach what we know, unconsciously we teach who we are.”
Don Hamachek
Teacher training teaches us many things: theories of brain development, child psychology, educational law, curriculum design, pedagogical strategies, lesson planning, and assessment rubrics.
But it rarely teaches us how to respect a child.
It doesn't tell us how to step down from the pedestal of authority when we're speaking to a student. It doesn't show us how to observe without bias. It doesn’t help us navigate the space between challenge and safety, or how to communicate with integrity.
These are not soft skills. They’re the backbone of trust, growth, and transformation.
An Invitation to Reflect
As the school year winds down and summer offers space to pause, I invite fellow educators to reflect on five simple, essential questions:
When I return to my students after the holidays, how do I want to receive them?
How can I preserve their sense of wonder—not just for a term, but as a lifelong quality?
What experiences do I want to design for them, and why?
What skills and knowledge do I need to navigate risk, challenge, resistance, and learning, with care and confidence?
How can I empower my students to solve real problems—within themselves, with their peers, and across their communities?
Because maybe, hidden in our questions, are our greatest opportunities.
Outdoor Instructor
2moThis piece is concise and strikes a key point. It is indeed a key attribute of a great educator to build a bond with trust and respect at the heart of it, to see the world in the ways that they see it, to see the great possibilities of their future, to show it to them, and to do so in ways that they will never forget.