My student teaching officially ended last week, so this past week I have been entering the life of a lazy college student once more and it has been bliss! Most of my friends are studying and taking exams, but I'm just sleeping, reading, watching Doctor Who... you get the picture. It's quite nice.
That said, it was super hard to leave my class and my school. Even though student teaching was stressful, exhausting, and all-consuming, I loved every second of it (well there were some times that I didn't love too much, but for the most part it was great). I loved my kids, I loved teaching, I loved the school I was at, just about everything and I do really miss it.
This week, I have been thinking back on some of the experiences I had while teaching and some of the things that I learned. There was so much that I learned and so much that I failed at and so its good to take some time to process through it all so I don't forget.
Many of these lessons involved a little girl who tried my patience every day. She is as sweet as can be, but seriously behind in school. Everyday was a challenge to try to find a way to keep her engaged in what we were learning and fitting it to her level.
One of the hardest and most frustrating things in teaching this little girl was that she never did any homework. Every week, we would give her 8 spelling words and her homework every night was a different way to practice those words. Every morning, I would ask for her homework and she would give me a sweet, confused look like she had no clue what I was talking about. And every Friday, she would take the spelling test and get most of the words wrong.
My CT and I tried to get her to do her homework, her mom brought it up in a parent-teacher conference, but she still would never have anything to show.
So we started to get strict. Maybe this isn't the best strategy, but it worked. Every time a child would not have their homework, they had to start doing it during recess. And every day before they would leave, I would ask this little girl what she was going to do for homework that night and what she needed. If she needed a piece of paper or whatever, she could get it and take it home to do her work.
After a few days of not having recess, she gave me spelling homework one morning.
I have never been so excited to see words written out three times each.
I gave her a hug and a high five and she was all smiles. In the class, each student has a pass which is punched each time they do their homework and when they get 10 punches, it becomes a free homework pass. So I gave this girl her first homework pass and she was so proud. She taped it to her desk so she wouldn't lose it.
I'm going to be honest. While I was excited and so happy that she finally did her work, deep down, I was still a little annoyed. I didn't want to give her that pass or be so excited. Why should I be excited for something that she should have been doing all year long? Every other kid in that class turns in their spelling homework every day and I don't make a huge deal out of it, because they do what they are supposed to do. By me making a big deal out of her and celebrating, in a way, I felt like I was rewarding her for not doing her work for so long.
How often do we do this in our regular lives?
I don't want to be thankful when my friends, family, or roommate do something that I feel like they should be doing all the time anyway. Why should I thank them or praise them for something that they are supposed to do?
JD talked about this a few weeks ago in his marriage series, but it applies to every relationship.
We tend to assume the positive and point out the negative.
The temptation on that morning was for me to look at that little girl and say, "Thank you for finally doing what you are supposed to do, for finally following classroom procedure. Every other kid does this every day, thank you for finally doing what everyone else does."
We don't want to praise people for what we feel like they should be doing anyway. If my roommate cleans the kitchen or takes out the trash, I don't want to thank her. If she doesn't do those things though, I am quick to notice and get pretty annoyed.
The hard thing is to assume the negative and point out the positive (not my idea, straight from JD).
We are all sinners, so obviously we are all going to do wrong things, things that are annoying, disrespectful, whatever. If we know this about ourselves and each other, than why are we so shocked when the people around us do something to hurt us or annoy us?
A few months ago, I was driving down 54 to 40 and this woman whips around from behind me and gives me this awful look and flips me off. Apparently, she felt I had been driving too slow and was purposefully blocking her in (never mind that I was already going over the speed limit).
My automatic response was to be super annoyed and want to cut her off back. I did not, by the time I got over the shock, she was long gone.
In situations like that, we want to assume that the other person is just a terrible, rude person and respond accordingly. But we don't know that. For all I know, she had had a terrible day or was running late for something important or who knows what.
So what if instead of responding with anger and frustration when people let us down or are rude, we responded with grace. Instead of responding to road rage with more rage, we said a quick prayer for that person, that their day would go better or whatever.
What if we took the time to point out the good things that people are doing, instead of just the bad.
I definitely do not do this enough, never did it enough in the classroom. It is something that I am learning and wish I had done more of while teaching.
Wow this has gotten long.
Final thing, on my last day of student teaching, I had the kids fill out an evaluation of me. It was pretty awesome reading their responses.
One question was "Was there ever a time that I made you feel good?"
This little girl's response? The time that I gave her that homework pass.
That said, it was super hard to leave my class and my school. Even though student teaching was stressful, exhausting, and all-consuming, I loved every second of it (well there were some times that I didn't love too much, but for the most part it was great). I loved my kids, I loved teaching, I loved the school I was at, just about everything and I do really miss it.
This week, I have been thinking back on some of the experiences I had while teaching and some of the things that I learned. There was so much that I learned and so much that I failed at and so its good to take some time to process through it all so I don't forget.
Many of these lessons involved a little girl who tried my patience every day. She is as sweet as can be, but seriously behind in school. Everyday was a challenge to try to find a way to keep her engaged in what we were learning and fitting it to her level.
One of the hardest and most frustrating things in teaching this little girl was that she never did any homework. Every week, we would give her 8 spelling words and her homework every night was a different way to practice those words. Every morning, I would ask for her homework and she would give me a sweet, confused look like she had no clue what I was talking about. And every Friday, she would take the spelling test and get most of the words wrong.
My CT and I tried to get her to do her homework, her mom brought it up in a parent-teacher conference, but she still would never have anything to show.
So we started to get strict. Maybe this isn't the best strategy, but it worked. Every time a child would not have their homework, they had to start doing it during recess. And every day before they would leave, I would ask this little girl what she was going to do for homework that night and what she needed. If she needed a piece of paper or whatever, she could get it and take it home to do her work.
After a few days of not having recess, she gave me spelling homework one morning.
I have never been so excited to see words written out three times each.
I gave her a hug and a high five and she was all smiles. In the class, each student has a pass which is punched each time they do their homework and when they get 10 punches, it becomes a free homework pass. So I gave this girl her first homework pass and she was so proud. She taped it to her desk so she wouldn't lose it.
I'm going to be honest. While I was excited and so happy that she finally did her work, deep down, I was still a little annoyed. I didn't want to give her that pass or be so excited. Why should I be excited for something that she should have been doing all year long? Every other kid in that class turns in their spelling homework every day and I don't make a huge deal out of it, because they do what they are supposed to do. By me making a big deal out of her and celebrating, in a way, I felt like I was rewarding her for not doing her work for so long.
How often do we do this in our regular lives?
I don't want to be thankful when my friends, family, or roommate do something that I feel like they should be doing all the time anyway. Why should I thank them or praise them for something that they are supposed to do?
JD talked about this a few weeks ago in his marriage series, but it applies to every relationship.
We tend to assume the positive and point out the negative.
The temptation on that morning was for me to look at that little girl and say, "Thank you for finally doing what you are supposed to do, for finally following classroom procedure. Every other kid does this every day, thank you for finally doing what everyone else does."
We don't want to praise people for what we feel like they should be doing anyway. If my roommate cleans the kitchen or takes out the trash, I don't want to thank her. If she doesn't do those things though, I am quick to notice and get pretty annoyed.
The hard thing is to assume the negative and point out the positive (not my idea, straight from JD).
We are all sinners, so obviously we are all going to do wrong things, things that are annoying, disrespectful, whatever. If we know this about ourselves and each other, than why are we so shocked when the people around us do something to hurt us or annoy us?
A few months ago, I was driving down 54 to 40 and this woman whips around from behind me and gives me this awful look and flips me off. Apparently, she felt I had been driving too slow and was purposefully blocking her in (never mind that I was already going over the speed limit).
My automatic response was to be super annoyed and want to cut her off back. I did not, by the time I got over the shock, she was long gone.
In situations like that, we want to assume that the other person is just a terrible, rude person and respond accordingly. But we don't know that. For all I know, she had had a terrible day or was running late for something important or who knows what.
So what if instead of responding with anger and frustration when people let us down or are rude, we responded with grace. Instead of responding to road rage with more rage, we said a quick prayer for that person, that their day would go better or whatever.
What if we took the time to point out the good things that people are doing, instead of just the bad.
I definitely do not do this enough, never did it enough in the classroom. It is something that I am learning and wish I had done more of while teaching.
Wow this has gotten long.
Final thing, on my last day of student teaching, I had the kids fill out an evaluation of me. It was pretty awesome reading their responses.
One question was "Was there ever a time that I made you feel good?"
This little girl's response? The time that I gave her that homework pass.
