A few days ago I heard someone referred to as a "Master Teacher". From what I can tell the main credential for this title was the woman's incredibly lengthy career (84 years old and still at it). This comment launched a discussion with a friend of mine over what really constitutes a "Master" teacher, and whether or not we felt as if we had ever really seen one in action.
For myself I feel lucky to say that yes I do believe I have seen a Master teacher, perhaps more than one. I think a master inspires. I think they are the ones who make teaching seem effortless in the moment but behind the scenes work the hardest. I have seen teachers who work 3 different lessons into a twenty minute circle time. Teachers who refuse to let a child with difficult behavior issues stop them from trying something new everyday to get through. Teachers with a strong tone and a huge heart, getting 3rd graders excited about fractions. Teachers who make it their mission to love the most difficult child in their class.
So what makes a master?
I think confidence without arrogance has a lot to do with it. Teachers who believe in what they are doing (sometimes whether or not it's the norm). Teachers who teach because it is really what they WANT to be doing (don't even get me started on the teachers who are at it for the summer vacation or the ones who think they make great teachers just because they've raised children).
Masters aren't afraid to "lose" control because they know that control isn't lost if it is willingly given. That noise and laughter aren't indicators that a class is wild, that learning doesn't have to happen in regimented silence, that sometimes messy is wonderful. Along the same note I think a master understands that learning doesn't always happen on the schedule you plan it on. That tangents can be just as valuable as curriculum, and that you are never sacrificing time if some kind of lesson is developing on its own.
I believe that masters ALWAYS take their work home with them. It doesn't matter if you have been teaching for 50 years and have a file folio that rivals the Library of Congress, a master teacher will still be coming up with new idea's, because a master teacher knows that no two classes are alike.
A master teacher will NEVER let their feelings for a child get in the way of what that child deserves in their education. In fact I believe a master teacher would go out of their way to make every child believe they are loved and valued. We all have students that rub us the wrong way... but in a master teachers class, you would never be able to figure out who that child is.
So what do you think? Have you ever been in the presence of a Master? What are your qualifications? When you think back on that favorite teacher... what was it exactly that made them better than all the rest? I'd love to hear!!
Teach on!
Showing posts with label Peanut Gallery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Peanut Gallery. Show all posts
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Are You Kinder Than a Fifth Grader?
This topic was suggested to me by a friend who is currently working with teenagers. Now I will concede that original audience is off my normal teaching radar by about ten years, but I think the issue should span every age range.
Here's the story...
As part of an assignment the students were asked to write down a list of ten interests. Some boys in the class chose to use this opportunity to tease another student by commenting that his first five interests should be being gay. The TEACHER then proceeded to laugh and say "number one could say guys, two could say guys, three could say guys...".
This serves as an extreme example of something that I'm sure happens far too often. What happens when it isn't only the children that require the emotional education? How do we, as teachers, deal with these kinds of situations when we see them happening? We might consider it our job to step in when it comes to students, but what about the adults around us? Not all situations are this clear cut, where I would probably just say go to a supervisor. But whether we like it or not, as teachers, our opinions will find their ways into our classrooms. And like it or not, the opinions of all the teachers around us won't always match our own. Often times teachers can sound as ignorant as the students they are meant to be mentoring.
Through my own journey from student to teacher I hate to say that I've all too often felt small pieces of my soul lost in similar moments of helplessness. It's not our place, not our class, not our student, not our problem. I could probably go on for hours about how far this problem can stretch. Love is a battlefield and so is teaching. For every child we fight to teach emotional awareness, there are a thousand factors working against us, and to find those oppositional forces on what we thought was our own side can be heartbreaking. I have no solution, I don't believe anyone does. Just faith to fight the good fight. By promoting emotional education we can only hope that we are in some small way preventing our students from someday causing the heartbreak.
Teach on
Here's the story...
As part of an assignment the students were asked to write down a list of ten interests. Some boys in the class chose to use this opportunity to tease another student by commenting that his first five interests should be being gay. The TEACHER then proceeded to laugh and say "number one could say guys, two could say guys, three could say guys...".
This serves as an extreme example of something that I'm sure happens far too often. What happens when it isn't only the children that require the emotional education? How do we, as teachers, deal with these kinds of situations when we see them happening? We might consider it our job to step in when it comes to students, but what about the adults around us? Not all situations are this clear cut, where I would probably just say go to a supervisor. But whether we like it or not, as teachers, our opinions will find their ways into our classrooms. And like it or not, the opinions of all the teachers around us won't always match our own. Often times teachers can sound as ignorant as the students they are meant to be mentoring.
Through my own journey from student to teacher I hate to say that I've all too often felt small pieces of my soul lost in similar moments of helplessness. It's not our place, not our class, not our student, not our problem. I could probably go on for hours about how far this problem can stretch. Love is a battlefield and so is teaching. For every child we fight to teach emotional awareness, there are a thousand factors working against us, and to find those oppositional forces on what we thought was our own side can be heartbreaking. I have no solution, I don't believe anyone does. Just faith to fight the good fight. By promoting emotional education we can only hope that we are in some small way preventing our students from someday causing the heartbreak.
Teach on
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
The Double Edged Sword
Welcome new year!
So instead of waiting for lesson inspiration to strike, I thought it'd be better to just let inspiration strike where it may. This mainly means more of my meandering thoughts on teaching. Lucky you!
Today I was thinking of the double edged sword. I have a student; a boy who, despite his often sweet thoughts and good intentions, finds himself on the wrong end of a bad decision pretty much daily. Most of the time these decisions lead to fights with other students. During one of these fights yesterday this boy came to me. I'm sorry to say now that I can't even remember the complaint he made to me, so quickly did I brush it away with a stock response for minor offenses. But today it bothered me. Don't I tell this child, and others like him, everyday that if there's a problem he can't solve he should ask a teacher for help? I'd be willing to bet my collection of teaching stickers that most teachers ask this of their students on a daily basis. And yet, we then walk the thin line between a student that asks for help...and the dreaded tattletale. In fact we can become so annoyed with the tattletales in our class that we begin to dismiss children who come to us in good intent. Yesterday this boy came to me and instead of saying "Thank you, I'm glad you told me, let's work it out together." I made some wonderful contribution like "Alright, tell so and so to give it back."
How do we keep from getting here? Beyond teaching children how to handle their own conflicts, how can we encourage children to come to us for help without getting burned out? How do I continue to recognize that however small the problem seems to me, it was brought to my attention because it feels big to my student?
Thoughts? Suggestions? Personal musings? Share with me!
So instead of waiting for lesson inspiration to strike, I thought it'd be better to just let inspiration strike where it may. This mainly means more of my meandering thoughts on teaching. Lucky you!
Today I was thinking of the double edged sword. I have a student; a boy who, despite his often sweet thoughts and good intentions, finds himself on the wrong end of a bad decision pretty much daily. Most of the time these decisions lead to fights with other students. During one of these fights yesterday this boy came to me. I'm sorry to say now that I can't even remember the complaint he made to me, so quickly did I brush it away with a stock response for minor offenses. But today it bothered me. Don't I tell this child, and others like him, everyday that if there's a problem he can't solve he should ask a teacher for help? I'd be willing to bet my collection of teaching stickers that most teachers ask this of their students on a daily basis. And yet, we then walk the thin line between a student that asks for help...and the dreaded tattletale. In fact we can become so annoyed with the tattletales in our class that we begin to dismiss children who come to us in good intent. Yesterday this boy came to me and instead of saying "Thank you, I'm glad you told me, let's work it out together." I made some wonderful contribution like "Alright, tell so and so to give it back."
How do we keep from getting here? Beyond teaching children how to handle their own conflicts, how can we encourage children to come to us for help without getting burned out? How do I continue to recognize that however small the problem seems to me, it was brought to my attention because it feels big to my student?
Thoughts? Suggestions? Personal musings? Share with me!
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
When the Lessons are for You
So today was one of "those" days. You know, when it seems like you're down to the very last drop of your patience. When every noise sets you on edge. When each toy left on the floor seems like a personal vendetta that you and only you can avenge. These kinds of days always seem to be both a nightmare and a blessing for me. Just when I think I can't take it for another second, and the smoke from my temperamental Vesuvius starts to fume... my teacher karma sets in.
Case and point: Due to a short field trip to our local library my class is running about fifteen minutes behind schedule. Because of this, lunch time seems to be a whirlwind of chaos as we try to get everyone served and fed in as little time as possible. The children are serving themselves at the normal glacial speed that four year olds only seem to adopt for things that you need done quickly. In my haste I announce that I will be pouring their drinks and begin to fill their glasses. Of course I'm thinking 'I'm on top of things now, I'm the in control adult'. And thats about the time I notice that I have poured almost an entire pitcher of water onto the head of the student sitting beneath me.
Yes, I am the in control adult.
And right there, right in that moment when I think maybe I have really lost it for the day.... this little boy puts his hands on his hips, looks at his friends at the table and declares "Well I think I'm getting a shower!" And we laugh. I mean really laugh.
Teacher karma... I say so often is probably the best saving grace of this job. I honestly believe teaching is one of the few jobs on this planet where you can be having the worst day and in a single act/word/ look from a child suddenly be thinking "this is the best job ever". The moment where a child says "I love you" for no reason, or you hear them humming a song to themselves that you taught them, or they sense your grouchy mood and tell you 5 minutes worth of completely nonsensical knock knock jokes, or they walk up with that piece of artwork they've been slaving over for the last 20 minutes and announce that it was made for you. What other job has these moments? Teacher karma...sometimes the lessons are for you. Take a deep breath. It's not the end of the world. Stop taking things so seriously.
Patience is supposed to be the teachers superpower, but everybody has a day of kryptonite. I'm always curious how other teachers deal when their emotions get the better of them. Parents and teachers alike, if you have any suggestions or stories I'd love to hear!!
Until then I'll just keep humming my old Follies backup "It's like I'm losing my mind" and remember that karma never sends us storms without a little sunshine after.
Teach on!
Case and point: Due to a short field trip to our local library my class is running about fifteen minutes behind schedule. Because of this, lunch time seems to be a whirlwind of chaos as we try to get everyone served and fed in as little time as possible. The children are serving themselves at the normal glacial speed that four year olds only seem to adopt for things that you need done quickly. In my haste I announce that I will be pouring their drinks and begin to fill their glasses. Of course I'm thinking 'I'm on top of things now, I'm the in control adult'. And thats about the time I notice that I have poured almost an entire pitcher of water onto the head of the student sitting beneath me.
Yes, I am the in control adult.
And right there, right in that moment when I think maybe I have really lost it for the day.... this little boy puts his hands on his hips, looks at his friends at the table and declares "Well I think I'm getting a shower!" And we laugh. I mean really laugh.
Teacher karma... I say so often is probably the best saving grace of this job. I honestly believe teaching is one of the few jobs on this planet where you can be having the worst day and in a single act/word/ look from a child suddenly be thinking "this is the best job ever". The moment where a child says "I love you" for no reason, or you hear them humming a song to themselves that you taught them, or they sense your grouchy mood and tell you 5 minutes worth of completely nonsensical knock knock jokes, or they walk up with that piece of artwork they've been slaving over for the last 20 minutes and announce that it was made for you. What other job has these moments? Teacher karma...sometimes the lessons are for you. Take a deep breath. It's not the end of the world. Stop taking things so seriously.
Patience is supposed to be the teachers superpower, but everybody has a day of kryptonite. I'm always curious how other teachers deal when their emotions get the better of them. Parents and teachers alike, if you have any suggestions or stories I'd love to hear!!
Until then I'll just keep humming my old Follies backup "It's like I'm losing my mind" and remember that karma never sends us storms without a little sunshine after.
Teach on!
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Welcome!
Throughout my journey to becoming a teacher I've found that I am most inspired by lessons that teach emotional education. A teacher that can motivate a class to be excited for math, writing, or reading is amazing. One that can motivate even a single child to survive in a world of obstacles and emotions is a treasure. I think the idea of emotional education can be intimidating for most teachers. They're afraid it isn't their place, or in their ability to reach into the depths of what makes up the little humans that walk into their classrooms everyday. Don't get me wrong, I don't think it is our job to "mold" children any more than most parents would want us to. But I do believe in the power of enabling a child to emotionally handle whatever they may come up against, at the very least, in our own classrooms. Think of it in terms of the war on bullying that has made such a strong appearance in our schools today. This recent push towards bullying awareness is great, but a few lessons a year won't really cut it on a daily basis of social interaction, pressures, and stressors. So often teachers find themselves asking how they will deal with a situation that requires discipline, but what I find so often lacking is the mindset that these situations are opportunities for emotional lessons. In a classroom with 25-30 children this seems like a luxury, but if the lessons are worked in from the start, then eventually they will require less and less attention. Sitting and talking with a child for 5 minutes one day may save you hundreds of minutes of “discipline” in the future. Even better, working these lessons into everyday curriculum allows the children to learn to interact with each other with compassion, in turn making the classroom all the more family environment that is strived for. My goal for this blog is to not only share some idea's for everyday lessons in emotional intelligence, but for it to become a forum where teachers who have used lessons themselves may share them here for others to reference. If you have a lesson that you have used with positive results please email the details to me so we may share it with others who are looking for a lesson to use in their own class! Photo's, samples, video, and audio files are all accepted. Let's start the emotication revolution!!
Teach on!
Teach on!
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