Courage, or: Just When You’re About To Take A Mental Health Day

When I think of the word courage I think of:•My father serving as a young U.S. Marine during the four-year Korean War Conflict, having given up a football scholarship in order to do so•My Uncle Sam, following his service in WWII, beating up a sheriff in the South for not answering to the word, “boy”, and then having to leave town because he would have been lynched•Slaves traveling the Underground Railroad•Protesters during the Civil Rights Movement•Ida B. Wells Barnett speaking truth to power, even when her very life was threatened on many occasionsWhen I think of teaching and my role as teacher, courage doesn’t come to mind. At least, not until I read an essay by Daniel Heischmann in his article, “Moral Courage in Teaching and Leadership.” Mr. Heischmann had this to say about courage:…a lot of courage is about acting fearlessly even when we have fear, an almost heroic pursuit of the good even when we feel hardly heroic. But a lot of courage could be categorized as the bold exercise of our duties and convictions day after day, in lieu of the spotlight or the acclaim.As a teacher, the very act of walking into my classroom and standing before my students every day demands courage, for every new day brings the unkown. Planning a lesson without any idea how well it will go demands courage. Having to be the adult by establishing standards and sticking to them, as opposed to being the cool dude/chick demands courage. Confronting a student when he/she has physically or verbally bullied another student demands courage. Apologizing to the students when I have made a mistake demands courage.Not that I would ever compare my life as a teacher to going to war, escaping slavery, or fighting dogs and hoses in Birmingham, AL. But some days it comes pretty close, and on those days, courage is all I’ve got.