Lessons Learned So Far: Teaching, Year 2, Entry 2

What a classroom looks like when you move classrooms entirely on a Thursday night. Blurry vision intentionally incorporated into photo.

39. Talk less. Designate the task, give the directions, assign the roles, and turn them loose. It works a lot better than lecture lessons.

40. Use fewer tones. Have a happy tone, have a directions tone, have a last warning tone, but leave the drama tones to the theater. Kids are easy panic triggers. If your tone becomes higher, faster and frustrated, you lose them to panic before the message is transferred. In discipline, keep the matter of fact tone, go lower, not higher, pace words evenly.

41. Blame the system. You don't have to do it because I say so, you need to do it because this is the way the classroom works, and I don't want to send you out, but if you break the classroom system, I have to... Suddenly, it's just the machine works of the classroom and school, no longer an evil teacher being mean and unreasonable. It never seems to phase them that the system you blame is the system you created...

42. Sometimes, clearly spelled out mercy works better than harsh punishments.

43. End the class every period by telling them to, "Get out... and have a good day!" and eventually, whenever they leave your classroom or presence, they'll make sure to wish you a good day before they leave every time. It's nice. Say it a minimum of 6 times a day, and get wished it a minimum of 100 times a day.

44. Students are entirely different people when in entirely different teachers' classrooms. 'Nuff sed.

45. Narrow in on one classroom management area at a time. If you feel you need to improve the class exit procedure, do that, but make that your baby. If you try to fix 7 different management issues, you'll be scattered and frustrated, and so will the students. If you focus harshly on training one item for a week, and then make a new focus next week, while maintaining last week, the students will learn what is expected better than trying to demand two new procedures at once.

46. The teacher needs as much classroom routine practice as the students do.  Making sure that the students push their chairs under the tables every time they get up takes as much out of you to remember to enforce regularly, as it does for them to remember to do it regularly. (Hence lesson #45)

47. Blame yourself. True, there are things that you cannot take credit for (Some kids will never study or do homework), however if the thing is, "This class just won't be quiet."or something of the like, blaming the students only gives you the excuse to quit trying, blaming the yourself makes you start looking for sources of the issue, and strategies that can curb the problem before is starts.

What happens when you listen to student ideas for the door decoration.

48. If a student in your class has good study habits, a strong understanding of how to behave appropriately in a classroom, how to talk to peers, how to treat teachers, or any sort of thing that would make a person want to say, "He's such a good student!" then you probably need to thank their teacher in the grade level before yours, because no person is naturally a good student, it's a vocation that must be taught. (Parents deserve a lot of credit too, but even "good parents" have kids who act out in a classroom because mommy's not looking right now)

49. Teach some of your students how to run your classroom technology! You never know when you're going to have sub whose highest technological skill is using a touch-tone phone, and will be completely incapable of running the slides you left for class, let alone be able to turn on a projector or unlock the computer when it falls asleep.

50. Hinging on #49, whenever possible, grab your squirreliest kid and throw him onto running the slides for the day, or queuing up the videos. He'll pay better attention, feel important and necessary, learn technology, and maybe actually remember what happened in class that day! (And, you'll know exactly when he's goofing off, because that's when the slides on the projector screen will start fritzing out... :-/ )

51. If you work on a subject for a really long time, so long that you as a teacher want to vomit if you have to hear or speak the word "inertia" again, and work on it in several different ways, making the students work the concept out in writing, lab practice, reasoning, discussions... you'll be relieved when the unit is over. The zinger is, you'll fall out of your seat in shock when 3 months later, you explain how satellites stay in orbit, and the students raise their hands and say, "Isn't that just using Newton's 1st law of motion?" Suddenly, hearing the word "inertia" will make you want to kiss someone.

52. Really, really, really invest in the classroom relationship. Own up to your mistakes when you make them, or they'll never stop holding them against you. Don't burn bridges by losing your cool. Don't insult the way a student is doing something, because then you have insulted the way their brains and hearts work, which is who they are.

53. Appeal to the ideal side of the student, even if you only see it every once in a while. Point out the good attributes that you catch sight of in them and tell them that's who they really are, because, at this stage in their life, they really have no clue who they are. Take advantage of their confusion and nudge them towards their best sides.

54. Let them cry. They do that. Especially during adolescent years. Acknowledge that they feel hurt. Expecting them to suck it up and soldier soullessly through their trials is unreasonable. Allowing them to take a moment to cry it out, and then jump back into life, lets them acknowledge the issue, and then acknowledge that there is life outside of that issue.

55. They know when you're just trying to pass the time. They sense when you're unprepared. They may never say anything (though often they will), but they know. Every time. You can see it in their eyes.

56. They can be really, really sweet and helpful. And that's nice. Even though, sometimes you'll spend an hour outside of class time trying to undo something they good spiritedly "helped" you with, the good spirit is still rewarding to see.

57. They break your heart. The thing that makes you reevaluate whether or not you can keep doing this vocation is not the piles of paperwork, hassles from coworkers, the long hours, the parents, the piles of homework, or the adolescent behavior... the thing that makes you really wonder if you can keep doing the job is the heartbreak. With over a hundred little souls, every day, laying claim to some small portion of your heart, the odds are high that a few of them will fall down so hard that they shatter that portion of heart that they were clinging to. Odds are at some point you will have to find some alone time to overcome the heartbreak.

The Letter: We.

I had a rough day today. I've had worse. But, my goodness, I have had so many better days, too.

This made picking up the mail and finding this envelope that much sweeter.

I have received correspondence from a combination of 5 Compassion students since 2008. That's a lot of letters! Off the top of my head, I can think of 3-4 letters that have truly threatened to make me cry for one reason or another. And it has been a while since those times.

So it surprised me, when I read through 9 year old Alex's brief letter-penned for him by his older brother-when my lower lip trembled a little at the end of it.

 

You see, Alex lives with his Grandmother and his 6 siblings in Haiti. He is the youngest, and every letter, one of his older siblings does the writing for him. 

So, for the first time in my Compassion experience, sponsorship has been an extremely strong family affair.

The rest of his letter is phrased, "He greets you"  "He thanks you" "He..."  He.

And then...

We love you so much.

We. 

All 8 of them.

 

That's a lot of love to feel rain down on a soul, especially at the end of a rough day.

 Especially from people I have never met. I don't even know what his family looks like.

I could tell you about all the good I can do for someone living in poverty, how easy and inexpensive  it is to help someone who needs it. I could tell you that you should consider reaching into someone else's life to help make it better.

But not today. 

Today, I am going to be selfish.

 Today, I am telling you about a little boy and his family, who wrote a letter to someone who needed it. About a little boy who reached into someone's else's life and helped make it better without even realizing it. A little boy whose Christmas money was spent on a pair of shoes, but could still afford to to improve my life.

Sponsorship shouldn't be about what I get out of it, 

but today I am going to share a little truth: 

sometimes they're the ones sponsoring me.

Today's smile was brought to you by "The Letter: We."