Noel Tichy (2004) argues that all leaders must have a "teachable point of view." In other words, a philosophy of what it means to lead. In my opinion, because we as teachers are leaders; we too need our own philosophy. One way to construct or uncover our "teachable points of view" is by asking our selves what our purpose in life is and then applying it to our work. Below is an adapted post I originally wrote here (http://happinessapplied.blogspot.com/2010/04/life-planning-and-our-calling.html)…

Being an online instructor affords a good amount of autonomy within the classroom. With such autonomy, however, comes decision making. We continually face decisions such as, how to manage our classrooms, how to manage our students, what material we present to augment the prescribed curricula, and how we set our priorities. Additionally, we face decisions regarding whether or not to use a universal standard in our grading or use an individualistic matrix according to a student's progress, to…