The Shape That Defines You: Navigating Your Way Out of the Box
Breaking Free from the Limitations Others Place on Your Potential
Reflect But Don't Remain
One of the most damaging choices a leader can make is to place a box around the potential of those they work with, but the even more egregious choice is when we believe them.
Reflecting on my educational journey, I noticed this trend as early as my student teaching. When I was in my undergraduate teaching program, my assignment was in a kindergarten classroom. Prepping the morning meeting on the rug, gathering materials for the station rotation for math, and ensuring my students had visual manipulatives were all accomplished. I was putting in the work. I was attentive, punctual, and curious.
I can remember distinctly sitting on the rug during our circle/story time when I read the word government aloud to the kindergarteners. I was then heckled by my cooperating teacher because I hadn't stopped to explain the word to my kindergarteners. After that incident, she told me that she didn't think I was cut out for kindergarten and that it wasn't where I fit.
The purpose of this recollection is not to demean another educator, as I am certain she was trying to help guide me. Rather, it is to mark the moment that I allowed someone else's opinion to limit my potential and ultimately place me in a box that didn't include elementary education.
Later in my career, I wanted to teach high school English, and I approached the English Supervisor to ask about how to apply. Her response? She felt I wasn't ready to teach high school English and would be more suited to middle school education. Similarly, I truly believe she felt she was giving sound advice, but what was really happening was that she was placing a box around my potential, and I was allowing her to do so.
My point? There are countless moments in my journey when someone told me that I wasn't ready, couldn't do it, or wasn't suited for who I was. My mistake? I believed them. My lesson? Feedback drives decision-making among educators, and the way in which we give it can trap the potential in front of us.
Patience and Gratitude
As I moved through my career, I started to define what my shape was. I was grateful for each experience I was given because it provided the blueprint for what I was building. Somewhere along the way, I realized I didn't have to be in a box. I could define how that shape was formed through opportunity, connection, gratitude, humility, and authenticity.
Admittedly, this did take time and patience to define, but I surrounded myself with positive, solution-based thinkers. Leadership should be hinged on empowerment, not the imprisonment of the potential that lies within the educators in their building.
Remember that your journey might seem hard to envision, and building your shape might take mistakes, redo's, and rewrites-but it is exactly that: your shape.
Own it. Define it. Celebrate it. Evolve it. After all, it takes many shapes to build something beautiful.
