During the week of TFA orientation, the week that followed the most intense 5 week period of my life, I was asked to participate in a unassuming personal interest inventory. You have seen them before, filled them out before. They are a variation of those Myers-Briggs type tests. They are made to make us as productive as possible. And that is a good thing. We should be productive.
Generally however, I feel like these type tests are used as levers by the management to increase their bottom line or whatever. As a result I do not take them seriously. TFA changed that somewhat. When I took this inventory, I engaged in the exercise with earnest, and found something not totally surprising: the things that are most important to me are spirituality, physical activity, purposefulness and significant relationships.
TFA put a twist on the investigation. "Now that you have these 'critical' interests, think about what your job can provide. Think about what your job can provide out of the 10 interests you originally chose. The remaining interests are things that you must find outside of your job. You must make time for these, or you will be ultimately unsatisified with your life and your teaching will suffer."
Out of the four, purposefulness is knocked out by work. Exercise will come through work next semester, when I coach soccer and run with my kids for an hour and a half every day. The other two however, those are tougher.
To be continued...
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What would it look like to shuck the husk of the status quo, to turn the world on its head, to remake it, to offer hope, to love? Here is one man's pursuit of these questions.
About Me
- Mr. Blair
- Houston, Texas
- I am a second year teacher by way of Teach For America. I teach 7th grade math.
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- This website expresses the views of the author, who is entirely responsible for its content. It does not express the views of Teach for America, Purdue University, or any other institutions named or linked to on these pages.
1 comment:
Part 2 better not take a month and a half to appear, Mr. Blair. I mean, every man is allowed to blog at his own pace, but now that there's suspense involved, it seems unkind to make the public hang on for your usual twenty day waiting period (she says in the 'haha, I'm a jerk!' voice).
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