Blogush

I was out yesterday and happened to end up sitting next to five six graders.  They were talking about all the typical things that sixth graders would talk about and then they shifted to a serious discussion about their teachers.  I have to say before describing their conversation that all of my teachers sensors said that this was a great bunch of kids, the kind you would want in your class.  Also when the conversation shifted to school they were being serious, they were not trying to insult their teachers.  At first I was just listening, but then had to take out and pen and paper to write down some quotes(might be a few words off but they are pretty close).

“I made one line crocked and she took off points.  It didn’t change the meaning and no one else on the world would have cared.”

“I put one extra space in between the answers and she took off points.”

“I got a ‘B’ on my spelling test.  He asked me what I thought.  I thought a B was pretty good but I said ‘I think I should work harder.’  “

“Even when we do great on work and work hard they find something to mark wrong so you can feel bad about yourself.”

“They always make sure they they find something on your paper that they take off points so that they can say ‘I taught them something.’”

They went on and on and eventually just started laughing at all the actions of their teachers.  What started to take shape were not the lessons they learned from their teacher’s comments, words, actions, or assignments, but how they learned to play the system to keep them off their back.  Even when the teacher thought they were learning, it was just them giving the teacher what they wanted to keep their grade up and the negative comments at bay.

Well of course I started to think about what my students were saying about me as they got together over the weekend.  Yes, of course they talk about me when they get together.  I am definitely more interesting than Lady GaGA.  Then my mind shifted to what would I want them to say.  What kind of class experience would I want them to be describing?

What are your kids saying about you?  Put five of them into a room and what do they say about the time they spend with you?  If you are middle/high school they spend about 170 hours a year with you.  What impression are those hours leaving? If you are an elementary teacher, or a homeschooler, they spend a whole lot more.

I have some homework homelearning for you.  Find an image that best depicts the experience you want your kids to have.  You could interpret that as meaning your personal children, future kids, or current students.  So whether you are a college professor, a homeschooler, a 3rd grade teacher, an online educator, or even if you don’t have any children yet I would love for you to contribute.  If you are a student choose an image that depicts how you would like your education to be.  Just click on the link and follow the directions.

http://moourl.com/sfam1

1-Click on an empty slide to the left.
2-Click on Insert—>then image
3-Select the image from your computer or the url
4-Flickr images need to be saved and uploaded
5-Place any personal information you would like under the image
6-Click save and close

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about the power of words.  It focused on the fact that the words that teachers use in a classroom can have the power to lift a student up, or tear them down.  After writing the post I continued to think about the words teachers use, not their effect, but why they are chosen in the first place. Why do teachers label kids with certain words?  Why does a teacher chose to label a kid a jerk?  Why does a teacher label a student lazy? Why does a teacher label a kid unfocused, rude, disrespectful, terrible, or “doesn’t work up to their potential?”

I realized early in my career that teachers actually have the same students each year.  After the first month or so all the students get shuffled into the roles of the previous year’s students and they receive their name.  You have probably met some of them.  There was Joe “Lazy,” Kathleen “Doesn’t want to work up to her potential,” Frank “Rude,” Mary “Her parents don’t even care,”  Harold “Doesn’t care about anything,”  Nicole “I waste my time with her,”  Jerry “Never asks questions,”  Helen  “Doesn’t come back for extra help,” Greg “Never focused,” Melissa “Doesn’t Study,” and Carey “Needs to pay more attention.”

Those labels take the pressure off teachers.  Why is Greg failing?  It is because he is never focused.  Why does Mary not pass in any homework?  It’s because her parents don’t care.  See how easy it is!  If you give each kid a label and a reason for their actions you remove responsibility from the teacher to figure it out and place it on the student. There is no need to continue wondering what is going on and why the kid is having problems.  Greg would simply do better in class if he just focused.  After labeling we perceive all of their actions as coming from that label.

We fear uncertainty.  Labels prevent uncertainty by predicting results.  Label a kid a jerk and that is what he is, no need to figure him out—it is certain what the problem is.  No need to figure out why the kid is doing what they are doing.  No need to try and figure out how to help the kid.  They are just a jerk.

Labeling a kid also changes our reaction to their actions.  When we label a kid we place our emotional baggage into the label and into our treatment of the kid.  We react to everything based on past experiences that we have had.  It is nearly impossible to not do this unless you stop, and realize that is what you are doing.  We interpret the students’ actions as being done to us.  If a student doesn’t hand in work the teacher says “He did not do MY work.”  If a kid says that a class is boring it is “He told me that MY class was boring.”  Teachers take the actions of the students personally, their words and actions hit on the baggage that we carry with us that was packed by our parents, our teachers, and our previous life experiences.

It’s easy to overreact when we interpret every event as done to us.  And then afterwards, when we think about the action or re-tell the event it is just as good as experiencing it again. The same emotions boil up again, the same hormones are sent raging through our body.  Research has shown that imagining an event is just as good as experiencing it in person.  When a kid does something to you that you find offensive, how many times do you replay it in your head before the next day?  By the time you see the kid 24 hours later it is like they stabbed you in the heart 100 times over because your brain has gone through the same process when you imagined it as when it actually happened.  We have placed so much meaning into the words they have used that we no longer possess the ability to look at the action clearly and make an objective decision.   We replay actions over and over in our head, feeding some need for us to be right and them to be wrong. We not only assign meaning to the words based on our emotional reaction, but also we need to make us victorious in the end—we must be right they must be wrong. We need to stop and not react to our reaction, but to the actual words and the person before us.

Not only does our baggage influence our reaction to a past event, but it also makes us predict the future.  Think about what type of kids you hung out with when you were a teenager…I bet that you have no problem with kids you teach right now that would be considered part of that crowd.  Think about the kids in high school that drove you crazy, and I bet you have problems connecting with that type of current student.  Personal note—without identifying the group, there was one type of student that I never connected with for my first 12ish years of teaching.  I then realized it was because of my past baggage with this “type” of student.  Since then it has never been an issue.  Come on…if you weren’t a metal head growing up, when a kid comes in on the first day with a Slayer shirt it’s hard to not have any preconceived notions about how they will behave and perform in your class.

The reality is that most teachers were good little students from good little homes.  They sat up tall in their chairs, did all their homework, were respectful to adults, followed the rules, and played the game of school very well.  When they come across a kid who doesn’t it is so hard to see that kid’s perspective.  It is hard to for their mind to grasp why a kid does not “do well” in school.  In those cases teachers rely on something that they can grasp to make sense out of the student’s behavior…label the kid with words.

“Words reduce reality to something the human mind can grasp.”
Eckhart Tolle

Yesterday I made my first presentation to a group of teachers. I led a session about integrating technology into the Social Studies Classroom at the Connecticut Council of Social Studies Annual Conference. I left very excited, not about my presentation, but about how much I learned about presenting this topic to adults. If it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert in something, I have 9,999 more presentations before I become an expert in making this presentation. What is amazing is even though I have been teaching 13 year olds for 20 years, this presentation still made me feel like I was up in front of a class of kids for the very first time. The clock was not my friend. I realized that the first part of my plans that were suppose to last 5 minutes, was taking 20. At the 45 minute mark I realized that there was no way I was getting to what I considered the best part and the “highlights” of session. I also wish I had given out some kind of quick feed back form—right now the only thing in my head is what I thought went good and bad, which might be totally opposite of what the audience thought.

I would like to encourage everyone to consider sharing their passion at an upcoming conference. If you hadn’t noticed, there seems to be fewer and fewer classroom (or ex-classroom) teachers presenting—or has it always been this way and I am just starting to notice. Too many teachers tend to be afraid to share what they are great at doing, and that fear shaped my presentation. Last June Karenne Sylvester left a comment on one of my posts that stuck out for me: “All too often we spend ages thinking about the ways we’re not good enough without thinking of all the ways we shine.” So true. I ended up sticking to a more “nuts-and-bolts” presentation on tools rather than the powerful work my kids have done with them. By the time I relaxed and realized what I was doing there were five minutes left and I actually said “Do you mind if I brag about something great that my kids do.”

I have a few more proposals in for conferences this year. I really wish I had had the courage years ago to submit proposals. I would have many more hours under my belt on my way to becoming an expert. Even if my other three get accepted, I will still have 9,996 more presentations to go