On the top of the last page of the Denver and the West section of the Denver Post, there is a quote from William Bonfils the founder of the paper, "There is no hope for the satisfied man". I am not much for personal credos or personal mission statements. I tend to find them somewhat parochial, unimaginative, and unoriginal. However, if I were to subscribe to a personal credo Mr. Bonfils' is about as close of a match I could find. It reminds me to cognizant in always searching for a new adventure or task and all engaging in the process of life-long learning.

I think that teaching is a profession that demands a credo, however. The stipulation is this credo should not be an overarching and banal credo, of "to educate the masses" or "to bring knowledge to the ignorant", but rather a personal summation of why you engage in this profession. I believe this is necessary to overcome the long hours, the endless work,  the students more concerned with final grades than learning (a paradigm of results rather than processes), and to help answer the unrelenting question of whether I am making a difference. We struggle daily, at least I do, to know whether we are succeeding, and our success is often hard to either qualify or quantify. Thus, there might be a need to establish, re-establish, or confirm the motivating factors that brought us (you) to this profession and distill such factors into a simple sentence or two - something one can turn to when the process of teaching seems to lack reward, recompense, or acknowledgement.

In addition, teachers might need and deserve to develop a credo because of the emotions we exhibit to this profession: passion, tenacity, dedication, endurance. I will acknowledge that all professions contain struggles, shortcomings, and lack of recognition; though I believe, teaching is a unique subsector within the profession realm.

Have I developed my personal teaching credo? No, I have not. Will I work toward alchemizing my feelings toward this profession into a simple one or two sentence credo? Yes, I will. Have I committed the insidious error of asking and answering questions within my writing (a personal pet peeve as I consider it lazy writing). Yes, I have - gross. However, perhaps that is part of the process in which we breakdown our rules and regulations to be honest with ourselves to live with ourselves - and even allow ourselves to construct poorly written closing paragraphs. I hope everyone at least thinks about his or her personal teaching credo, and perhaps if you have one you desire to share you will share it, and let us know what it means to you.

Thanks,

Eric