Tuesday, January 7, 2014

How Do You Stay Motivated?

Photo by rosipaw used under a Creative Commons license
I am a K-12 educational technology specialist, but due to the nature of my job duties, I go through long
stretches where I do not have direct interaction with classroom teachers or students. My office is in an administrative building, not on a school campus. Often, I am working on district initiatives, such as supporting the use of iPads in classrooms or planning for staff development. Or I am researching solutions to technology needs our administrative staff have.

I find when I've been too long away from working with teachers and students I begin to lose momentum. When I am not in regular contact with the front lines of teaching and learning, I start to question what my purpose is and whether or not I am making a difference.

The good news is, I find that almost any opportunity I get to help teachers and/or students re-energizes me. Being with them for a training or learning event fills my tank and renews my understanding that the things I do in the background really do matter.

If you are in a position like mine, where you support teaching and learning but have to go through periods where direct interaction with your "customers" is minimal, do you have similar experiences? If so, what do you do to stay motivated?

If you are in a position where you are regularly engaged with teachers and/or students, what advice might you have for someone like me? How can I know if what I am doing is truly helping you and your students?

I appreciate anyone who takes time to share their ideas in the comments section below. :-)



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All original work in this post by Sandy Kendell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Please see specifics on my re-use policy in the right-hand column of my blog before re-posting/re-using any of my blog content.