Faculty Meeting

Joining a faculty meeting was just as interesting as the PLC! I was surprised at the format
of the meeting as we met in the library since there would be a lot of teachers meeting. The
meeting revolved around a presentation from the principal, Nate Elkins. I’ve come to build a
professional relationship with Nate and have gotten a lot of good advice and learned a few things
about balance from conversations with him about classroom management. I was excited to get
the chance to hear a full hour presentation from Nate, especially because it focused on items I
wasn’t expecting!
Nate began the presentation and I expected it to be a hour long lecture going over some
interesting factors, but I was pleasantly surprised when Nate utilized many of the classroom
strategies I’ve seen Peggy use in her college courses. Nate had intermittent areas of group
discussion/work that was a wonderful break from the lecture as well as a wonderful opportunity
to reflect with some other faculty members that I had just met that day! Nate gave us a plethora
of information regarding philosophies that he felt were important for a teacher at North Star (and
for teachers in general). My personal favorite philosophy discussed was the idea of something he
called “The Abyss” (I know this isn’t the exact term Nate used, but I’ll explain the idea). Nate
talked about how education has natural areas where students fall into the abyss, where they run
into a problem that they don’t know how to approach/handle so they fall deep into the abyss.
Nate talked about how the abyss is often a scary thing for teachers because they often believe
learning doesn’t happen when students fall into the abyss. The common thought is that anyone
who falls into the abyss will be discouraged to try and won’t have the tools to solve the problem
at hand. However, Nate pointed out that the abyss is a natural part of the learning process and
that we, as teachers, need to empower our students when the fall into the abyss to teach them that
you have to fall low sometimes to be able to climb back up. Someone who falls into the learning
abyss isn’t lost, they are searching for a way out!
Now, there are some instances where students might fall into the abyss and won’t know
how to start to get out. That is where we come in as teachers as we have the skills to get out
ourselves and our teaching strategies are the tools we can use to help guide our students’ climb
out of the abyss. By providing our students with the necessary tools but not robbing them of the
difficulty of the problem, we are building resiliency around learning for our students. I know
myself personally has run into many students who have low resiliency when it comes to solving
problems in their life and at school. I’ve always been worried that I wouldn’t be able to build
resiliency in my older students because they have learned over time that giving up is easier than
pursuing the challenge. This ideology is one I want to flip in my students heads and is one of the
reasons I want to teach older grades, because I feel I have the tools and skills to teach my
students resiliency through hard work and genuinely interesting problem solving (task launches
in math, lessons that challenge American history, science lessons that are inquiry based, etc.).
Nate’s metaphor about the abyss was a wonderful metaphor for the kind of teaching philosophy
I’ve always had, and it was wonderful getting a chance to hear another professional having my
philosophy. Even better, Nate helped create a metaphor that perfectly explains my philosophy,
which is something that has been difficult for me when writing my teaching philosophy. Overall,
the meeting was a collection of teaching philosophies that Nate felt would benefit our school and
I’m glad that I had the chance to experience it with my STE.