Begin with the end in mind

Coming home from yoga on Sunday morning, I saw one of the condo cleaners at work in the basement. This man was transferring the rubbish from the huge bin under the rubbish chutes into his cart. After this, I guess he would drive the rubbish to the bin centre for disposal. It is not a pleasant job, and it is often made worse by the loose rubbish, that is, rubbish that had not been placed in plastic bags and tied up. This morning, the sweeper had the unpleasant job of picking up bits of leftover food, wet and soggy tissues, and other types of yucky stuff with his hands. Not a nice thing to have to do on a Sunday morning or on any other morning.

All residents have received reminders about bagging rubbish before disposing of it, but I guess not many people take heed of this. Maybe they think they can do what they like since they pay a maintenance fee. And it’s really quite easy to forget the rubbish once you’ve put it into the chute and closed the lid; out of sight, out of mind. But do we think about what happens to the rubbish at the other end of the chute and of the people who have to pick up after us because we were too lazy to put our rubbish into a bag? So unwittingly, we have made life harder for someone else because of our thoughtlessness.

And I am reminded of Stephen Covey’s begin with the end in mind. Clearly people who litter, people who don’t bag their rubbish, and people who thrown glass bottles down the rubbish chutes do not have the end in mind. Certainly the end is more than some convenience for them; the consequences of their actions also go a long way beyond merely inconveniencing a cleaner. And I am not just thinking of the politically correct and tired slogans about saving the environment.

But what has this got to do with the classroom? As a teacher, do we bear in mind the consequences of our teaching decisions for our children and for teachers in the next levels who will receive the children into their class in the coming years? Many consequences can and do arise from our decisions and actions. For instance, if you don’t teach a child proper penmanship, the child may end up a slow writer and may hate to write in the upper levels. If you don’t ensure that your child can read while she is with you, this problem will grow out of control later. If you don’t insist on certain standards of behaviour or demand quality work, these may not be learnt in the later years when the curriculum becomes more crowded. But like the person who dropped his leftover chicken bones down the chute, no one is there to witness what you do in class. But whatever you didn’t do becomes your colleagues’ load to bear.

Like chucking rubbish down a chute, it’s convenient to ignore some issues when teaching in favour of what seems more urgent. It is also easy for us to forget what we did not do after the children have left our class and our charge. In the upper levels, it’s easy to focus on just drilling children for the exams and neglect other broader issues related to life and education at large. If we are all attentive to what we need to do each at our own level, instead of allowing ourselves to be drowned by the curriculum, the exams or by other seemingly more urgent issues, we won’t be treating our colleagues like the cleaner who has to pick up what we have carelessly discarded or failed to take care of. We don’t want to be treated like that, do we? So, take a long view. When making any decision about teaching, begin with the end in mind.