Teaching Beliefs

Sitting in training for the new Core Curriculum on the first Monday morning of my summer break.  In the opening ceremony, they asked us to write down some of the core teaching beliefs that drive our practice.  This is what I came up with off the top of my head, unedited and fresh.

Students respond to honesty.  If your are honest about yourself, your subject, and your assessment of them, they will be more honest with you.

Students respond to respect.  If you look down on their hobbies, their clothes, their hair, their grades, their peers, or their opinions, why should they not look down on you?  And how could you believe you don't deserve it?

Students value your opinion.  Deep down, both teachers and students are human beings, they want to be liked, they want to trust you, they want each other's validation.  Just like original analysis is often the most important and interesting part of a good paper, the times you step out of Information Dispensary mode and into What You Really Think About That Information Mode are often the ones that even the kids you think have turned into zombies while they sit there will perk up their ears to listen.  

Students want to like your class--no one wants to be bored, left behind, or talked down to.  At the beginning of the movie Hitch, the main character points out that no matter how emphatically a woman says she's not looking for love, that she doesn't have time, that she's really into her career, etc., no woman wakes up and thinks, "I hope I don't get swept off my feet today."  The same applies to students.  No matter how much they say they hate you, your class, or school in general, no student wakes up and thinks, "Gee, I hope I'm miserably bored and fail today."  

Students can achieve, but you have to give them something they see as worthwhile to do.  If they don't like you, your subject, or the assignment, the only reason they'd complete it is because they already have a habit of obedience and success.  If they do, congratulations to their former teachers and their parents for instilling it in them.  However, they only form about 10% of your students.  The rest are going to need at least like one of the three variables to even try.  

Students respond to recognition.  Whether it be for their achievement in your class, their good fashion sense, their witty disruptive comments, their martyr-like position in the family, that their cold makes them sleepy, or that they doodles they draw on the worksheet you gave them are works of art, even if the worksheet is otherwise blank.  After repeatedly complimenting one student on his drawing, and even mentioning it at parent teacher conferences, he suddenly started turning in his worksheets, coming to talk to me before or after class about what was had happened over the weekend.  He still failed my class, but he started enjoying the class and learning from it, which I cared about a lot more than his grade. 

Students respond to patience and consistency.  You will be with those students for nine months.  Nine months of junior high is a lot of time for the quickly changing and developing students.  Keep patient with the ones that drive you up the wall first term: they may be your favorites the next term, if you haven't driven them away or written them off.  In a world where they themselves and all their friends are all changing physically, emotionally, psychologically, and friendships are formed and broken and mangled and affirmed multiple times daily, your consistency and the steady and dependable conditions in your classroom will be appreciated more than your or they realize.  Unlike their hormonal friends, you do not fly off the handle with no reason.  Though their families are growing, moving, changing, or even breaking, your classroom is always in the same place, with consistent rules and expectations  Your consistency and patience is an asset to both you and them.  

Students have the right not to listen, like you, or do their homework.  You can make them be quiet, you can make them sit still, maybe you can even make them copy down the notes, but you can't make them learn or care.  You can invite, encourage, threaten, plead, and gently tease, but there will be students every year who hate you, hate your class, and think you're a terrible teacher who tells bad jokes.  Some students will fail your class.  The government will tell you that every student should pass, but the government's never had 250 students.  In any sample of 250 early teenagers, a handful of them really will fail your class.  You can make them stay after, put a pen in their hand and a worksheet in front of them, their parents can threaten and bribe, and yet they will sit still, stare into space, and not do the stupid worksheet.  Don't look down on the student for it or for hating you if they hate you, they have that right.  Don't try and take it away from them.  

The second to last day of school, this was in the office.  It's a balloon version  of our mascot, the Caveman.   All I can say is wow.