BCE Year End Message for Teachers

Posted on December 30, 2013

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As we’re almost through with 2013, I wanted to thank all the readers that have made BCE a success this year.  We’ve had over 4,800 page views since we started in July with over 1,400 in each of the past two months!  We’ve been retweeted by policy makers across Tennessee and had our work featured on a number of publications, both online and in print.  This type of support has really solidified our belief that we are truly fulfilling a need here in Shelby County.

As the year closes, I want to leave our readers with two quotes that I think best sum up the work we do here at Bluff City Education and the work we hope that teachers everywhere will pursue:

If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, write something worth reading and do something worth writing about.“ Ben Franklin

Whether you are a current or former teacher, administrator, parent or student, you have already fulfilled both these criteria.  Your experience with the great american education system deserves not only to be remembered in the future but heard in the present.   Consider every successful social justice movement in the history of our country and the personal stories that drove them.  It’s only when we tell these stories that things truly changes.  Your story and your work, wherever you happen to be, deserves to be written about and deserves to be remembered.

I learned that courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.“ Nelson Mandela

As teachers, we so often fear what will happen when we chose to share our story.  What will our colleagues think? Will we be ridiculed? Dismissed out of hand? Ignored completely?  What I’ve learned is that this fear never goes away.  They key is to push past it and  have the courage to speak out on behalf of our schools and our kids even when we are afraid.  We are the ones with the knowledge of how the policies our leaders adopt truly impact our kids. With that in mind, we can’t afford NOT to share our stories!

So to teachers everywhere, your stories deserve to be told and you must have the courage to tell them. Thanks for a great 2013, looking forward to what 2014 will bring!

By Jon Alfuth

Follow Bluff City Education on Twitter @bluffcityed and look for the hashtag #iteachiam and #TNedu to find more of our stories.  Please also like our page on facebook

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