How Your "Hero's Journey" Shapes the Way You Lead
"The usual hero adventure begins with someone from whom something has been taken, or who feels there is something lacking in the normal experience available or permitted to the members of society. The person then takes off on a series of adventures beyond the ordinary, either to recover what has been lost or to discover some life-giving elixir. It's usually a cycle, a coming and a returning."
Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces
To be an educator means to perform courageous acts on a daily basis. It takes heroism to break free from the status quo—not only to question a failing system but to dig deep and resolve to change it through sheer will and determination.
Embracing your leadership style is part of the journey you're already on. As Sandi Herrera, Founder and CEO of Educator Dynamics, says, "We are all leaders of our own lives. And we've all been through significant life experiences, no matter where we are in our journey. We all have several different heroes' journeys within this greater hero's journey of who we are."
Micro Class 2 in our Educator to Edupreneur Masterclass, "My Identity," will help you explore the concept of leadership and teacherpreneurship through the lens of Joseph Campbell's monomyth, or "Hero's Journey."
Campbell's masterwork is routinely taught as part of the high school curriculum and has been used as an apt allegory for overcoming the challenges facing teachers, students, and parents. However, the exercise of applying its lessons to the concept of educational leadership is unique, though every bit as illuminating.
The Hero's Journey is the ideal vehicle for self-exploration. Micro Class 2 will encourage you to dive deep into life-changing questions:
How does your personal Hero's Journey inform your leadership style?
Your purpose?
Your passion?
Where are you on your hero’s journey as an edupreneur?
Embarking on the hero's journey means exposing ourselves to risk, but it also means opening ourselves to opportunity. The hero's journey strikes at the core of the contemporary education paradigm: to embrace the power of learning, to transform lives, and to empower our students to discover their best selves.
Campbell's myth gives clarity to educational leaders who seek to harness the power of the hero within. He writes, "How [do we] teach again, however, what has been taught correctly and incorrectly learned a thousand thousand times, throughout the millenniums of mankind's prudent folly? That is the hero's ultimate difficult task."
Exploring your identity as a kind of Hero's Journey will open you up to new ideas about what kind of leader you can be, and how to leverage your leadership skills to redefine the next chapter of your own journey.
Our masterclass helps you face the challenges you will take on this difficult, necessary task on the way to fulfilling your edupreneurial destiny, no matter what it might be.
Channel Your Life's Passion Into Authentic Leadership
We explore the Hero's Journey as it relates to leadership in Micro Class 2 of the Educator to Edupreneur Master Class. Learn more about the 11 other classes within the program and how the Educator to Edupreneur program adds purpose to passion, so you can stop dreaming and start doing.