Credit: Angie Miller The life of a teacher requires a big investment in the well-being of others. As a teacher, my drive to and from school every day was filled with scenes from the school day and thoughts about whether my students were truly learning. As those concerns grow throughout the year, they could crowd out some brain space. Evening appointments might get missed, and the big picture of what really matters in the classroom might get overlooked. I was always incredibly thankful, then, for the winter break. It allowed me to engage in a process I too often neglected: pondering. To me, pondering is a practice of deep thinking. It is not necessarily strategic or goal-oriented. It requires us to, for a time, neglect some of the pressing responsibilities that cause us to lose focus. During that time, our minds orient around a purpose—individual to every one of us—that connects our head to our heart. No matter your career title, pondering is an essential task. You can’t serve others without first serving yourself. Every culture and successful organization I can think of has some form of pondering built into their personal development. I consider that a good sign of its power. Here are my favorite questions to ponder during a break: What’s my contribution? What story am I meant to tell? How will I become the best at making that contribution? Whom will I touch? How will I know it mattered? What is most worthy of doing when everything seems important? What will my impact be? How will the world be changed because of my presence in it? What do I need to practice tomorrow to ensure that my time here is well spent? Bring these questions into the foreground over the next week. All the details that you worry about during a regular week—put them in the background. The details always become clear once the deeper questions get answered.

Copyright Brandon Stanton, Humans of New York When you tell people they matter, often you don’t know right away - or ever - if they believe you, or are listening at all. Sometimes, you start to feel that maybe you don’t matter. But know this: They DO Believe. They ARE Listening. You DO Matter. In some instances you learn later about the impact you had on someone, and in some instances, you never learn about it. But the fact remains: when you tell, and show, people that they matter, to you and to the world, you change and save lives, to a degree you can only imagine. One former student showed up on my stoop 20 years later, in the dress uniform of a US Marine, to show me that he did become somebody important, as I had apparently predicted when he was five. In "A Few Words From You Can Save a Life," we share many other examples of people discussing, years or decades later, how a few words from a caring person had changed or saved their lives. One of these instances became headline news this week, courtesy of a young man named Vidal and Brandon Stanton, the passionate and caring person behind Humans of New York. Brandon walks around NYC photographing and interviewing people, and then sharing their image and words with the tens of millions of people who read his work. Last week, he met Vidal, a student at Mott Hall Bridges Academy, a middle school in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn. Brownsville is not an easy place to grow up, go to school, or teach. Brandon asks all of his subjects one or two simple questions, and then records and reports their response. This was his conversation with Vidal: "Who’s influenced you the most in your life?" "My principal, Ms. Lopez." "How has she influenced you?" "When we get in trouble, she doesn’t suspend us. She calls us to her office and explains to us how society was built down around us. And she tells us that each time somebody fails out of school, a new jail cell gets built. And one time she made every student stand up, one at a time, and she told each one of us that we matter." A day later, this conversation was recounted to Humans of NY’s 11+ million fans. At the time it was published, Ms. Lopez was trying to enjoy a play with her daughter, but the world had other ideas. Suddenly, she says, "I started to get all these text messages from my teachers and former students….my daughter said: ‘Mom, we’ve got to find out what’s happening.’ So we went and sat in the car. And I read what Vidal said, and I began to read the comments. And tears started coming down my face. Because even though I always tell you that you matter, up until that moment, I didn’t feel like I mattered." Brandon met with Ms. Lopez, and learned about her struggle to convince her students that there was more to life than what they experienced in their neighborhood, and that they could become somebody important. She dreamed of taking her incoming sixth graders on a field trip to Harvard to, as I like to say, stretch their thinking and help them envision success. When Brandon learned that such a field trip would cost $30,000, he asked his followers for $100,000, to fund three field trips. For the second time in two days, the world responded with one of the most emphatic "You Matter" statements that anyone will ever hear. The $100,000 was raised in a few hours, and $300,000 in a day; ten years of field trips were funded. Ms. Lopez then spoke of how a summer program would impact the lives of her students, at a cost of $40,000. Hours later, ten years’ of summer programs had funded. Brandon then created the "Vidal Scholarship" to send Mott Bridges students to college, and said the first recipient would be Vidal. Currently, almost $300,000 has been raised for the scholarship fund - for a total of nearly $1 million (please consider a small donation). How has this impacted Ms. Lopez, who brought this all on by telling her students, one-by-one, that they matter? She told her students today: "I have something to admit to all of you. Before all of this happened, I was about to give up. I was broken. I felt like typing my resignation. I told my mother: ‘Mom, I don’t think I can do it anymore. Because I don’t think my scholars care. And I don’t think they believe in themselves enough to care. I’m afraid they don’t think they’re good enough.’ And she told me to pray on it. But I told her, ‘I might be too angry to pray.’ And I know this is hard to believe, because you guys have never seen me break. But I was broken. It’s just like when you see your mom break down. You only see your mom cry when she’s been fighting so hard for you and she doesn’t think you care. That’s how I felt." Most of us will never learn this in such a public way - nor raise $1 million for your students as results - but when you tell people they matter, they believe you. They are listening. You matter. More than you may ever know. *** Click here to make a donation to the Mott Bridges Academy today! *** Click here to learn about our toolkit, Mattering IS the Agenda, which helps you create a culture of mattering in your school or organization.

I have the honor of being a guest on Iowa Edchat tonight at 8 pm CST. It’s a live Google Hangout supplemented by Tweets on Twitter. I will discuss my work and Choose2Matter, and products and services that we have released, or are working on. Below you will find ways to keep abreast of all developments from me and from Choose2Matter. I look forward to continuing the conversation! Angela Maiers: To learn about new blog posts, appearances, product releases, such as the upcoming Genius Hour Toolkit, enter your email address in the box below to sign-up for my email newsletter. You will be sent a link to my free e-book titled "Passion Matters" and receive our weekly newsletter; you can unsubscribe at any time.    Join my "class" on Remind.com to receive "You Matter" messages.   Follow me on Twitter.    LIKE my Facebook page.    Visit "Books" for Classroom Habitudes & Passion Driven Classroom.   Choose2Matter:     Visit Choose2Matter.org     Follow us on Twitter.      LIKE our Facebook page.      Click here to join our volunteer community on Ning.    Our toolkit to transform school culture, "Mattering IS the Agenda"      Learn about Choose2Matter LIVE.  

In most conversations about education, there is one guest who is rarely invited to the table: Passion. You are far more likely to hear the words "assessment," "standardize," "common core" and "pedagogy" than you are to hear the word "passion." There is a passion gap in education, and students are disappearing into it, and drowning in ennui. The post Let’s Close the Passion Gap appeared first on Angela Maiers.

My passion for groundbreaking technologies in classrooms is constantly fueled by new innovations I see teachers using. Most often, the technology that has the greatest impact is the kind that makes you think, "Well, duh. […] The post Remind Introduces Chat Feature appeared first on Angela Maiers.

I had the honor of speaking at #NSBAConf in Nashville this weekend. Below you will find the resources I shared and ways to keep abreast of our new product introductions and other developments from me and from Choose2Matter. I look forward to continuing the conversation! The post Resources Shared at #NSBAConf & Product Updates appeared first on Angela Maiers.

Any regular reader of this blog knows how much I value good writing. My own personal statement begins "educator, author…" As I wrote in an article for the Huffington Post, I am an author not […] The post Writing that is WOW - Worthy of the World appeared first on Angela Maiers.

In many schools, the core conversation practically defaults to "What went wrong today?" When any of the many things that can go wrong does go wrong, it’s all that everyone in the school community wants […] The post What Went Right Today? Let’s Write Our Own Narrative. #BreaktheCode appeared first on Angela Maiers.

Guest post by Nili Bartley, Brooke McMullen, and Crew 202 from Hopkinton, MA I didn’t realize the power behind signing YOU MATTER until after we did it. The second I reviewed the video my students […] The post #YouMatter - A Sign Worth Spreading appeared first on Angela Maiers.

This is a guest post from James Sapia, who teaches fifth grade ELA/Social Studies in Stamford, CT. His teaching philosophy: "I teach kids, not content. I believe in taking risks and working collaboratively to augment student achievement." Follow James on Twitter @mrsapia_teach The post #GeniusHour: "An intrinsic motivation to learn and grow" appeared first on Angela Maiers.