Hello!I’m Heidi, an Educator On Fire!
I’m Heidi, an Educator On Fire! Are you one like me? Send me an email heidi@EducatorOnFire.com, I love connecting with other educators with a fire in their belly looking to make their way or have been around the block, in the educational landscape.
Any time I talk about education I get a fire like feeling inside! There is no containing it and the fire simply shoots out (sometimes needs an extinguisher or a person who can at minimum handle the heat or the debate!) I’ve been teaching long enough to have been thrown up on, sworn at, cried while drinking wine after a long day, I have lived “in the trenches”, I’ve been fed-up with administration, I’ve spoken up or back to principals, helped my colleagues, nurtured colleagues, and taught as well as modeled hundreds of lessons.
I’ve taught students as young as 5 and as old as 15 (early childhood/primary – adolescent/high school). My niche is literacy with a specific focus on primary grades. Reading Recovery teacher, Reading Specialist, and Literacy Coach, are just a few of my enjoyed roles.
educatoronfire.wordpress.com 
Awesome!
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Yes!!! Love this and so proud of you!!! Light that FIRE!!!!
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Let’s get real…educators almost always choose our profession from the heart because somewhere in all of us burns the fire of passion for learning, for nurturing children, and for igniting ideas on the cutting edge of what is both new and useful. It’s watching our students reach that “AHA” moment when inquiry and discovery take young minds to the next level of mastery that fuels our fire.
Since 335 BCE. the world has been influenced by the minds of the greatest thinkers…..Plato, Aristotle, Socrates who defined the existential existence and infinite power of the human mind and spirit. Aristotle once wrote “The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.” This is the exact reason that the present shifts made in contemporary educational systems are failing our children. Contemporary education has diminished the art of creativity, reasoning, and discovery and is mandating that all children think inside the box. Fitting into the box of benchmarking and standardized testing and “achievement” are causing our students only to achieve the standards set forth by politicians for funding rather than unlocking their highest potential. Our foundations are slowly crumbling and with it our children’s hopes and dreams for their future.
It requires tremendous courage to be a teacher and say grounded in the belief that all children can learn. In my 20 years of teaching I have just had enough of watching students melt down, loose sleep, have seizures, and turn away from learning in school to the streets because they are made to feel incompetent by these standards.
All children do not think and learn inside the box….Whose standards are they anyway? In fact most teachers know and understand that the best learning takes place in a space “outside the box” The present standards were not created by the heart of the teacher who looks into the eyes of these lost children everyday, but by those whose motivation and desire are to show that the students are doing something instead of nothing. The present system is chipping away at their soul, dousing the fire, and diminishing intrinsic motivation for learning.
How can school systems who do not supply basic foundations in advanced teacher training, materials, books, pencils, and paper have the audacity to evaluate teacher performance and match it to student success. We are teachers….and collectively we possess some of the greatest most well developed minds on this planet. Somewhere out there is is a space for meeting of our minds and presenting gifts of education to our children. Otherwise we are sentencing our students and children to a life of mediocrity instead of mastery, excellence and personal fulfillment.
Education is not a business, it is not budgetary constraints and financial allocations. Education is a key to unlocking the potential of an infinite future of discovery and learning. Let’s stop this “runaway train” of intellectualizing and get to the virtues of true guidance and knowledge solidified by teh great mind who came before us, and those great minds that will craft the future of humanity for generations to come.
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