Playground Wisdom 5 to 8

5. “Always play nicely” and 6. “Challenge yourself everyday”

Well, I consider myself a nice guy and I pretty much get along with everyone, so always play nicely is something that I do everyday.  It is not something that I necessarily strive for, it is just me.  As for challenging myself everyday, I do.  Every morning I get up and go to school at the university; then I come home and spend hours doing homework.  That daily grind is a challenge everyday.  I go to school and have to think; some days my mind hurts from thinking and reflecting so much.  But, what a great thing when those hours of thinking and reflecting finally start to make the connections between what is happening at school and where I am going.  I have to play nicely and challenge myself or I am not going to end up being  the teacher I want to be  and especially the teacher I need to be.

7. “Don’t give up” and 8. “Trust”

We have been hearing since the beginning of the year “trust us” “don’t give up”.  At the beginning of the year I had problems doing that because sometimes I did not understand what the heck my professors were teaching us.  It just did not make any sense at times.  I do trust and I am not giving up, and I know that my professors have the big picture in mind.   I just do not always see the picture clearly.  Some days I wish I could go back and retake my fall semester because with what I know now, I could have learned a lot more from those professors.

Now let me look at it with a different lens.  When I think about “don’t give up” in a classroom,  I think about not giving up on a student.  If something is not working I should approach it from a different angle until that student gets it.  I have seen teachers giving up on students and I hate seeing it.  Pass the student on to someone else because the student does not get it, is out of control, or has a learning disability.  “My kids can’t do that” is giving up before allowing that students an opportunity to try.  Some days kids amaze me because they “can do that” if they are giving the opportunity and the freedom to try to do it.

Darin