By Dauna Easley
The beginning of January—a fresh start. Here’s a brand new opportunity for us to help our students choreograph a bright future. I love reflecting on my life and my goals at the beginning of a new year. I enjoy sharing that excitement with my Lakota West/Butler Tech students. I’m not saying I have a perfect record for tackling resolutions successfully. There is that pesky weight issue that always seems to be eluding me. But I love the way a brand new year gives us another chance to get it right this time.
Ed Barlowe, the futurist, visited our district recently. His message was clear. No matter how responsive and up to date we believe our curriculum to be, in today’s world knowledge, technology and careers are changing so rapidly that much of what we teach today will be obsolete well before we want it to be. What a discouraging dilemma—or an opportunity to think differently. If this is the case, what can I bring to my students that will have lasting value?
I believe my dream formula is one of the experiences from my classroom that has the power to change a life in a dramatically positive way. I lead my Teacher Academy students through the steps every year. January is the perfect time. I invite you to walk the path with us.
Ask teenagers, “What’s your dream?” Too often they will look at you as if you’re crazy. They haven’t been encouraged to dream. They used to have dreams when they were little, but they’ve forgotten them. Ask an adult, “What’s your dream?” Adults frequently don’t know either.
Step one is to actually have a dream. Step one is required. You can’t get anywhere without first having the dream. A dream realized doesn’t come from vapor. It comes from a seed. Don’t try walking your students through these steps until you have your dream firmly in mind.
What’s the most common mistake we make? We don’t dream large enough. We can dream about a three percent increase in income, but to dream about more, well, we think, do we really deserve that?
Here’s the problem. Only large dreams inspire us. It takes inspiration to get us to buy into the dream. It tak
es inspiration to move us forward. Puny dreams don’t inspire action. We follow people with large dreams who inspire us. What is one of the main differences between the mayor, the governor and the President of the United States? One dreamed of becoming mayor. The second one dreamed of becoming governor. The president dreamed of being the leader of the free world.
At this point, you and your students must enlarge your dreams. Make it an exercise.
This simple step will work wonders to give life to your dream. Print makes it official and motivates you into action. Print stares back at you and forces you to do something. Get it into writing as soon as possible.
I love Henriette Klauser’s book, Write It Down and Make It Happen. Whenever I have a dream I need to work on, I get a small notebook and start putting it in writing. My students get their dreams into print at my urging. We read them aloud.
This is a critical step. Find someone with whom you can share your dream. Seek encouragers but avoid doubters. Sometimes the people who will encourage you the most aren’t the people closest to you.
Carefully read the box titled “Choose Wisely” and get to work. A teacher should be a great encourager. I work hard to be one of the people my students think of when they are ready to share a dream.
Carefully select one or two people (if you’re lucky, maybe more) who you are certain will encourage your dreams. These people can be anywhere.
One of my dream partners lives in Nashville, while I live in Cincinnati. She is a publicist for bluegrass music and an artist. I’m a teacher, speaker and writer. She’s 20 years younger than I am. But we share our dreams and we motivate one another to accomplish our goals. We do it all through e-mail. When I’m discouraged, she reminds me of my successes. When she gets off course with her dreams, I gently ask her about her progress.
When my students serve as my dream partners, I always follow through on my goals. I never want to let them down. As I role model for them, it pushes me forward. Do you think that is a lesson that will become obsolete? Never!
Find pictures that represent your dream visually. Keep these where you will see them frequently. In my mother’s home, this was the refrigerator. Whenever she wanted something, she cut out a picture of the item and put it on her refrigerator. This system never failed her.
Some people keep a scrapbook. I have my students make posters that visually illustrate their dreams. These posters serve as a visual reminder—a roadmap—of where we are going.
Analyze what you want to accomplish. Make a written list of the steps it will take to accomplish that goal. For every goal there is a process.
The complete dream may be scary, but with one step at a time, you will see that it is doable. My students pick one to three dreams and list the steps it will take for them to succeed.
It is important to do this immediately, if possible. The first step is rarely scary. Taking the step moves you from the dreamer category into the realm of “doer.” If a student’s dream is to attend college, the first step may be gathering information online. It may be scheduling a college visit or filling out an application.
When you do these things a single step at a time, the fear begins to dissolve. I serve as a dream partner and an encourager as they navigate these steps.
Thoughts and visual images of your dream should be with you throughout the day. Some people like to write affirmations about their dreams that help them keep moving forward. For others, the visual images from step six are enough. I like to choose dates and have the class revisit our dreams. How are we doing? Are we moving forward? How many steps have we taken?
We all share our progress on those designated days. Those dates are on the wall so that they serve as a daily reminder of our goals. Giving a timetable to our dream pushes us all in the right direction.
No matter how busy you are, you must find even a little time daily to do something to move you in the direction of your dream. This is the step that may be the hardest. This step takes commitment. Skip this step and you may find yourself 20 years older with a great big regret in the place where your realized dream should have been.
Want to be a writer? Make time to write. I teach full time. This is the weekend, and I’ve already committed to watching my grandkids today. I’m writing this at 4:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning.
You must care about your dream enough to do the work. My students know about my dreams, and they know about the work involved. They hear about my successes and my failures. If you want your students to have the courage to begin moving through the steps to a dream, you must be willing to serve as a role model for this process.
As soon as possible, take the next step toward your dream. Always keep moving forward, slowly if necessary, but relentlessly, step after step. Inch by inch, it’s a cinch. There’s no other way.
Recognize your progress as you celebrate each small step along the way. This is so important, but somehow this one is hard for me. As soon as I accomplish something, I’m just on to the next step. Some steps don’t carry rewards within them. Sometimes it helps to set up a reward system ahead of time. Make it part of your list of steps.
“After I accomplish the next step on my list, I’m going to treat myself to _____________ “ (you fill in the blank).
Working toward a dream can be a lonely and sometimes frustrating process. Without some rewards along the way, a dreamer may be tempted to give up.
There you have it. That is the entire dream formula. Work the steps and accomplish absolutely anything you want in life. Caution: Sometimes it’s a short journey, and other times it’s a much longer process. But the map is there for you to follow. All you have to do is team up with your students and start working the steps.
Here’s some fabulous news to share with your students. You don’t have to work all of your dreams at the same time. You may be actively moving forward on one or two dreams while others are simmering on the back burner. But that doesn’t mean the dream has disappeared.
When I was a little girl I dreamt of one day becoming a writer. I wrote stories for fun. As a teenager I had a poem collection that I authored. But there were a couple of problems that stood in the way of that dream. I also wanted to be a teacher. No one in my family had ever attended college, and becoming a teacher without much in the way of financial resources was a pretty big dream.
Another hurdle? My high school composition teacher didn’t think much of my writing. Every paper I wrote received a B- for a grade. How can you become a writer if every theme you pen is only B- work? I found it very defeating, and I never told anyone about my writing dream.
But one day I had a breakthrough. A college professor, Miss Throne, held up a composition I had written and used it as a positive example for the class. She read it aloud. Do you think it’s an accident that I remember her name all these years later? The dream began to percolate again. But I became a teacher, raised a family, started a school, had a chronically ill daughter—in short, life forced the writing dream out of the picture. But still the dream never completely went away. I was in my late forties before I pulled the writing dream forward again and began working the steps to the dream formula.
As a result, when I was 48, I had my first article published with my byline in a local newspaper. When I was 50, I was published in Chicken Soup for the Soul. When I was 53, I published my first book.
The great news is that you don’t have to work all your dreams at the same time. Our students are young. They have so much time to accomplish all of their dreams. Think how much it helps them when we tell them about a dream that took us a long time to realize. Share your stories.
One of the great benefits of working with teens is that it forces me to set new goals. My students are aware of my dreams, and they encourage my progress. I do the same for them.
I’m keenly aware that I am always a role model. My successes become their successes as they shove me forward. My failures show them that they too can survive setbacks. Don’t underestimate the power of that lesson too.
A winner is no more than a failure who refuses to quit working the dream formula. Dream on!
- Dream
- Dream larger
- Put dreams in writing
- Share your dream
- Choose a dream partner
- Visualize your dream
- List the steps to your dream
- Take the first step
- Keep visualizing
- Daily work toward your dream
- Take the next step
- Celebrate!
Young children hold you accountable, but teenagers are worse. Adolescents may not be interested in what you say, but they put everything you do under a microscope. If you want your students to set meaningful and courageous goals, there is really only one way to get them to consider it. You must set meaningful and courageous goals yourself. Model it. Walk your talk.
Here’s an important truth that I share with my students. Each of us is responsible for finding our own encouragers. We all know that our families, friends, neighbors and fellow teachers represent a broad spectrum of virtually every type of personality. Each of us encounters optimists and pessimists. We all know dreamers and doubters. We come into contact with people who make things happen and people who are always complaining about what has happened to them. But if we want to live successfully, it is our responsibility to locate and surround ourselves with the kind of people who will encourage us to be the best that we can be.
No one else is responsible for our happiness or success. We alone are in charge of the selection process. This careful choice can mean the difference between fulfilling a dream or sleepwalking through a life filled with regret. Choose carefully. Good luck!
Dauna Easley, author of Teachers Touch Eternity, teaches a teacher academy program for Butler Tech at Lakota West High School in the Cincinnati area. She is also a popular speaker at state and national conferences, including the ACTE Convention. She can be reached at easley-d@prodigy.net.
- Techniques January 2004 Issue - 
