Endurance.

Last night I was thinking that being an early childhood educator is really a career based on endurance. It takes a long time to learn things. A lot of the techniques that you learn that work at one point may not work next year with the new children, or even mysteriously the next week with the same children. In the midst of the hard times in the classroom to be able to let things go at the end of the day, forgive the mistakes, and not to take things personally, and return the next day refreshed and excited about the work... it's really a marathon.