THINGS I LOVE ABOUT TEACHING!?!?

[Mike]

Hi All.... thought it might be fun to create a list of things we continue to love about
TEACHING!!!!

Here are a few of mine to start us off::

1. Providing a safe, comfortable, and encouraging place for troubled students kids.
2. Relating to students.
3. Teaching something brand new to a kid.
4. Having a student teach me something i never knew.
5. Seeing kids helping one another.
6. Watching kids mature over time. I have had kids in my room for as long as 4 years.
7. Putting a smile on a kids face.
8. Watching a student develop confidence in themselves.
9. Watching kids succeed at things they love doing
10.Trying to figure out different ways to try and teach a concept.
11. Designing ways for kids to become important and helpful to others. Giving them things to be responsible for.
12. Having fun!

So...feel free to add....

be well... mike

[Erin Ogden]

So often I've heard such negative things about teaching, and it's been a little discouraging. But what little teaching I've done, once I got over the "Oh dear lord, I'm teaching!" jitters, has been exactly what you all describe here--not perfect, but highly rewarding.

I can't imagine doing anything else with my life.

[Janet Navarro]

Erin, I'm glad you found this conversation and added something. It was great to go back to it and see what had been said last Spring. Because, in the midst of all the other stuff that comes with "teaching," in the middle of a term when bogged down by the grading, the testing, the meetings, trying to maintain a constructivist classroom context when oodles of students are out at seemingly random times due to rolling illnesses, fighting with the copy machine and trying to be "green" at the same time, well, you get the picture -- it's easy to lose sight of that which drives us toward this great profession and that which sustains us. It was good to be reminded. I also read an interesting article last night ---


http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2009/10/21/08publicagenda_ep.h29....

[Mike]

Hi All.....

Think of an adult who has had the most positive effect on you and your life....

What did that person do and how did it make you feel???

These people stay with us for a life-time..... it is the power that we can have as teachers in the lives of the kids that pass thru our classrooms and schools!!!

How many teachers did you spend a year of your life with and can not even remeber?

How many teachers have you had that made you feel less rather then more able?

Everyday....we get to decide..... which kind of teacher we want to be???

Let's list some of the behaviors of those "turnaround" teachers!!!

be well..mike

[Ian Carmichael]

And a flip side. (From -recent - personal experience, a teacher can get 'written off' before they open their mouth or step through the door. All it needs is a student 'opinion shaper' and they can do you in swiftly and succinctly.)
So, a question for students:
What kind of student do I choose to be?
What 'box' will I choose to put my teacher in?

[Mike]

Hi Ian... hope this finds you well. Those power kids...an interesting lot!

My experience as a classroom teacher has mostly been with "troubled kids". These kids all had very poor histories with teachers, schools and adults in general.... their stance was always first: fuck you...what makes you different.

I think many kids are relationship reluctant with adults.... mostly a defense which generalizes to all teachers. If they can goad the teach into a public conflict...their peers think thats pretty cool and they gain more distorted status.

For me... the student teacher relationship is not reciprocal.... and I came to see those kids as a project that time and some work on mostly my part could change.

It was always a lesson of "self-discipline"... with the essential question: Can i model respect to the dis-respectful.

I like Brendtro's list of ideas concerning connecting with difficult kids:

Recast all problems as learning opportunities.
Provide fail-safe positive relationships.
Increase dosages of nurturance.
Do not crowd.
Forced success.
Learn to decode the meaning of behavior.
Be authoritative, not authoritarian.
Model Respect to the disrespectful.
Notice small things.
Keep positive expectations alive.
Give seeds time to grow.

be well.... mike

[Ellen Pham]

It's discouraging when that happens right out of the gate... time and patience are on your side, Ian :)

[Ellen Pham]

And I'm grateful for the recent activity, so I could also discover this conversation that I missed the first time around.

Everything everyone has said makes me feel so hopeful : )

[ddeubel]

I had a teacher tell me today that they enjoy teaching because it keeps them thinking.

Selfish but true. I think therefore I like teaching.

David
http://eflclassroom.com

[Ian Carmichael]

Hi David,
I was thinking about this the other day - I love learning, and I don't mind passing it on...

I learn therefore I teach ... I think
or is it
I think I learn therefore I teach
or perhaps
I learn therefore I think I teach

Marvellous language, English!

[ddeubel]

Ian,

I think there is a Monty Python sketch in there somewhere.

At the end of the day, there is always some mystery in the center of all from which everything whirls...you'd know that from physics. It is just that we look at things from a certain side and take it as the truth....it is all a phenomenological riddle...

I find it terribly amusing that we all learn to teach by learning (our hours in the classroom). We should all be experts and indeed are.

Let's list some of the behaviors of those "turnaround" teachers!!!

Mike,

My turnaround teachers are those who motivate. Take a personal interest and say positive things. They teach so ALL kids can get a feeling of success.

What bugs me most about my years in school is how little feeling of success among students there was. Turnaround teachers know how to teach so everyone feels they are "getting somewhere" and so most students taste success. Once you taste it, you want more and you'll search it out anywhere..... We need to get our students hungry. We need more spark plugs and not so much flywheel.

David
http://eflclassroom.com

[Mike]

Hi All.... hope everyone is well. Finally a perfect fall day in Southern New Jersey.

This is pretty old now.... how many see an old lady?
how many a young lady?

Can you see both????

Wonder if teaching sometimes is not like that! We see many things that we assume is what teaching is and what techers do.... why not... all of us have spent lots of time in SCHOOL.

Yet... as we gain experience some of us go here..... following winnie the pooh in a strange way!!

“Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs, now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head behind Christopher Robin. It is as far as he knows the only way of coming downstairs, but somewhere he feels there is another way, if only he could stop for a moment and think of it.”
A. A. Milne

For me... at some level... "turnaround" teachers stop.... look around and say....teaching is more then the delivery of information... it is more then all the "stuff" of schooling.... it involves real human beings......which allows us to see the same thing.....but way differently!!!

David... you describe what turnaround teachers do for kids......they mirror for kids what is with-in them...even when the kids do not see it yet..... they create a spark with-in!

pretty cool stuff.....be well... mike