Sometimes in education the struggle seems like it is just too much.

With every child and family, we deal with there is always a fine balance.  What is the child learning, how engaged are the parents, what does the child or parent bring to school with them every day?  What has happened to the family even before the first bell?  What are we missing, what do we not see?

Each of us in our lives in education only see a part of the life puzzle that are our students and families.  We try so many different things to help motivate and engage the people we work with.  Sometimes we are successful, often we are not, most of the time we will never know.

To keep a healthy perspective, we need to learn to take one day at a time – this is certainly a tired out phrase, but there is great wisdom here.  Life can only be lived one day at a time, it is impermanent and it changes all the time.

Today, after working with a particularly challenging student one teacher commented, – well, I guess he won today. I really don’t know what to do about a comment like that.  Who wins in the work we do?  Are we supposed to win?  Is anyone ever the winner?

If we try to see that we are all on a lifelong learning journey, with good and bad days, we might be able to develop a more positive perspective.

It’s not about winning or losing, this is not a ‘battle’, this is life and we should all be learning together.