What Inspires Your Teaching And Helps Develop Your Core Values?

7/12/2026

Do you ever look back and realize that many things that happen are connected without us even realizing it?

A while back, I wrote about the importance of understanding your core values as a teacher and how those values influence the way we teach, build relationships, and support students. Looking back now, I can see that my own values were not only shaped in the classroom but also through experience.

One of the most influential experiences in my teaching journey began with a connection to South Korea. Over time, it became a thread that ran through my teaching, my relationships, and even my understanding of what it means to help students learn.

Curiosity: The Beginning of Everything

My first visit to South Korea was driven by family connection and curiosity. I was visiting my son and his soon to be wife, both teachers, and I naturally found myself observing everything around me with a teacher’s perspective.

I visited classrooms, explored schools, and noticed differences in how learning was organized. I spent time in bookstores and shops filled with educational materials, always noticing ideas I might be able to bring back to my own classroom.

At that time, I wasn’t thinking about core values or teaching philosophy. I was simply curious. But curiosity has always been one of the foundations of my teaching.

Connection: When Learning Became Shared

On a later visit, my focus began to shift from curiosity to connection. I started noticing similarities between the place where my son lived in Korea and communities on the west coast of Canada. I began thinking about how I could help my students make meaningful connections between their own lives and the world beyond their community.

That shift influenced how I approached cultural learning in my classroom, including how I talked about celebrations such as Lunar New Year. Over time, I became more intentional about language and representation, recognizing how small changes could support deeper understanding.

Around this time, my teaching became more focused on helping students see themselves in the learning.

Belief in Action: When Students Become Part of the Story

One of my strongest core beliefs has always been that every child can learn and be successful when they are supported and encouraged. That belief was reinforced in many ways throughout my career, but especially through experiences connected to Korea.

When exchange students visited our community, I saw firsthand how powerful it was for children to step into new environments and be welcomed. One young student, the youngest in the group, was placed in my Grade 2/3 classroom. Being far from home was not easy for him, and he needed time, support, and understanding as he adjusted.

At the same time, I had another student who was struggling with her heritage, and this reminded me how important belonging is in a classroom.

Those moments influenced the way I thought about learning environments and student success. They also helped me to develop projects and resources that allowed them to share their culture with others. This was the birth of my Heritage project.

Learning Becomes Personal

Over the years, I also had the opportunity to tutor students who had recently moved from Korea. As we worked together, we created several bilingual books based on their experiences and memories. Because I had visited many of the places they described, our conversations felt meaningful and connected. See the booklets we wrote together about South Korea. Many of the photographs were from my trips there.

Learning was no longer abstract. It was personal. And it reflected what I had always believed about teaching, that students learn best when they can connect new ideas to something real.

Looking Back: Values Are Not Separate From Experience

When I reflect on these experiences now, I see clearly that my core values were never separate from my teaching.
They were shaped by:

curiosity that led me to notice the world differently
relationships that connected classrooms across cultures
experiences that deepened my belief in student potential
and moments that reminded me learning is always human

My time connected to South Korea didn’t create my values. It strengthened them. And in many ways, it gave me real-life examples of what those values look like in action.

Core values are often described as something we define. But I have come to believe they are also something we develop over time.

For me, teaching was always shaped by what I noticed, what I experienced, and what I believed about the children in front of me. And sometimes, those beliefs were deepened far beyond the classroom, in places I never expected to find teaching inspiration at all.