JEFF’S VALUES

 Value 1: My family means the world to me.

My family helps me cultivate love, empathy, health, happiness, mindfulness, laughter, loyalty, grit, fortitude, strength, and joy. I protect and honor these relationships as the most sacred relationships in my life. I hope to share the love and strength that exists in my family with the people in my life.

 Value 2: My health and the health of people I love are very important.

I dedicate some part of each day to developing and maintaining healthy living habits. This includes physical exercise, preparing and eating nutritious foods, creating and maintaining healthy sleep habits, developing strong emotional and psychological health, and spending a portion of each day developing mindfulness. I also hope to support anyone in my life that shares these interests. When I am healthy, I serve others much more effectively.

 Value 3: I value deep work.

I enjoy working deeply. Based on the book Deep Work by Cal Newport, I define deep work as my ability to focus without distraction on cognitively demanding tasks. I cultivate my deep work habits so that I can become the most effective educator that I can be. In order to train my ability to work deeply, I want to spend focused time each and every day thinking deeply about hard problems in education, teaching, and learning. I expect some of this time to be spent in solitude reading, meditating, and writing about these topics. I also seek out and build strong working relationships with other people who share my interests in learning.

Value 4: I celebrate and believe in the ideals of democracy.

I think critically about myself, my communities, and the organizations that govern my life. I work consistently to become a better-informed member of society and to have empathy for other people. I act to express my beliefs and to encourage a society that reflects the values I hold dear to my heart. I believe that our local, state, and national governments exist to organize, protect, support, and govern all members of society. I believe an ideal democratic government should work first to guarantee representation and protection for people who have relatively little wealth or power. By combining the inductive attitude with empathy, self-awareness, and sentipensante, I work to build relationships and make meaningful progress towards justice, equity, and a more perfect union.

JEFF’S TOP-LEVEL PROFESSIONAL VISION STATEMENT

My top-level professional goal is to use antiracist learning science to help people thrive. I work to help others make learning meaningful, achievable, and purposeful. Everything I do in my professional life is dedicated to this top-level goal or to improving my skills with this goal in mind. In working to accomplish this goal, I hope also to empower people in my life to develop their own sense of democratic engagement in our communities and to think critically about how they might use their learning skills as tools to serve and empower other people.

Last Updated: Thursday 10/29/2020 at 7:01am