What's your certification?

There's a running joke that I use around Hoover from time to time, especially with the student teachers who are observing our school. "What's your certification?" I often ask them alluding to their content major they are earning towards their teaching degree. These certifications and college studies will translate into their endorsements on an Iowa teaching license. I usually get a response such as, literacy major with a social science minor, or K-12 music, or elementary education with an emphasis on math. Then comes the punchline that I use with well rehearsed timing: "You mean you don't have a K-12 certification in raising kids?"

It's a good joke, but one that isn't totally in jest. While we spend most of our time teaching our content such as math, reading, music, science, social studies, art, etc......don't we as teachers spend just as much of our time raising kids? This isn't to put down our amazing parents out there. We have incredible parents that do so much to influence and shape their children in ways we can't begin to understand. Rather, it is just alluding to the power that educators have in partnering with families to develop amazing human beings. After all, our kids spend many hours a day in our classrooms. We often joke that as educators we have "joint custody" of all the kids we see each day. Case in point: I cite my mom and dad as two of the biggest influences in my life. Right after that? Mr. Wright and Mr. Van Devender two of my teachers in junior and senior high school. You'll notice, I still don't use their first names. I'm a school leader and currently working on my doctorate and I have so much respect for these two men they will always be "mister" as long as I walk this earth.

Which brings me to my other point. While we have amazing parents and families in the world that are true blessings, we also have many children that come from difficult backgrounds. Trauma, need, systemic barriers, poverty, and lack of parental support are often the actuality of their lives. Doesn't this make our work as educators even more important and emphasize what our true "certification" really is? While we use math, literacy, music, art, social studies, and science as vehicles, our job as educators is to shape children into people that can think, love, create, and serve. Our job is to help raise kids to the best of their potential.  As Simon Sinek states, we want our children to grow up, become confident, and go on and achieve more that we could ourselves.

Adoption is a foundational part of my life. I was adopted from South Korea when I was 3 months old because my birth parents did the most loving thing a person could ever do; give up their baby so he could live a life that Simon Sinek described above. Then my mom and dad chose to do something that I think is the true essence of what we do as educators each and every day: raising and loving children that aren't our own.

So I ask again, what is really your certification?

“We should not be asking who this child belongs to, but who belongs to this child.” –James L. Gritter