Quick follow up to my attempt at taking two hours a day to focus on School work…a work in progress. When a person has multiple things they are responsible for going on in their lives and the people around them are used to them filling their every need…it takes time to establish “me time”, but I was able to catch up on all of the readings for my classes as well as finish two papers that are due this upcoming week. So in the end the stress on my shoulders still feels like a 200 kg bag of sand, but I’ve learned how to manage it. Hopefully this week I can see where I can tear some holes in the bag and start letting the sand leak out. Hopefully.
On with my blog!! I am proud to announce that I have one reader that seems to keep coming back week after week, who leaves thought provoking questions for me that make me question my sanity, intelligence, and wardrobe. I feel like if I saw this person on the street and I was wearing a Holiday light themed tie, that they would stare at it for about three seconds and them not be able to come up with the words to describe what they saw….:)
Anyhoo…I finished the book “…Can’t Play…” and wanted to write my thoughts about taking this successful implementation of the rule into the future. Paley mentions it in the book that even she was curious how the proceeding class would deal with the rule as it will be just that…THE RULE. The class discussion and research will have already have been done, so much of the education, or even reasoning, behind the rule will be expressed to the kids. They will be expected to follow it based on the success of 30 or so individuals in the class before them. A lot of the result was from specific kids that had certain issues playing with others. If the kids didn’t ask the questions the way they did or change their play the way they did, would the happy result still materialize? What if the kids in the next kindergarten class were entirely different and the rule didn’t work at all? Well, to help answer the later I think it is brilliant that this rule is one of discussion, not one of punishment. If it wasn’t working the teacher should facilitate a discussion as to why it wasn’t working and what could be done to get it back on track. I will admit that is one of the things that weighs on me as I move forward into this career (class discussions). The way Paley controlled the conversations when they happened with profound questions to some of the kids claims. She was fantastic at stepping back and helping the kids understand the main point of the discussion. She would reword what the child said to help them understand what they were saying, heck, what they were feeling. To me that was the real reason this rule worked. The “popular” kids began to feel what rejection felt like and the other kids began to feel what being included feels like.
For me, this is one of the reasons I want to become a teacher. I want to help kids avoid the same pit falls I ran into as well as help kids take advantage of opportunities I wasn’t aware of at that age. I’m concerned that when a moment of learning comes up I will not be ready to say the right thing to help shape the discussion for the class (or student). Two examples I just ran into this week with kids on the track team I coach. One kid was winning his 100 meter dash championship race when he stopped running at the 90 meter mark believing it was the finish line. Three people passed him at the last second and his mistake cost him a medal in the race he’d been preparing for two months. He came back to the stands and had the most horrified, dejected look I have ever seen. I had to say something and a bunch of jumbled, unstructured words came out of my mouth. I wanted to say “keep your head up kid. You just experienced the one event you will talk about the rest of your life. It will motivate you, provide you with inspiration, and in the end give you so many friends who will relate to this story as you grow up”. But I didn’t say it, I said “I’ve always wanted to make it a 10 hectometer race, that way no one would know where the finish line is”. He totally missed the sarcasm, and I totally missed my chance to make a difference. The other is a tough example where the volunteer running a field event mistakenly told a girl who came in 5th that she received the 2nd place silver medal. The girl who knew she had earned 2nd place was too shy to let the volunteer know that they had made a mistake. The mother of the shy girls comes to me, explains the situation and asks if I could talk to the 5th place girl and get the medal back. NO I say in my mind!! The girl who came in 5th doesn’t know she came in 5th, she thinks she came in 2nd. I’m not going to be the one to smash that dream…because I know how it will make her feel. But is that right? What is the right thing to do here? To me the girl who came in 5th just got the endorphin shot of a lifetime, and all of a sudden believes she can who what she thought was impossible. Sure it wasn’t real, but it is powerful enough that the next time she does that field event she just might be able to do it for real.
Bottom line, I know these situations will be daily in my classroom and I will have to mediate what is fair and what is the “right” thing to do. I’m not comfortable with this yet as I am struggling to make this work in my own personal life. I trust that my kids will understand what I mean, but I’m not so sure about the parents. Knowing the parents involvement with the kids education is paramount to success in the classroom, I do not under any circumstance want to make a bad move in the decision making process. I’ll be more than happy to admit when I made a mistake, but I can’t imagine losing the trust of the parents because I did something I thought was right, and it ended up hurting another student (and their family).
If my one reader comes back this week, I hope they might have some insight as to how to think about this subject. After all, I’m pretty sure my reader is a professor somewhere. The way she writes I think it is someplace warm, with turquoise water and palm trees…and it seems like she is constantly sipping a cup of orange juice.
Cheerio.
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Sand will leak, and sand castles will be built, and this year will have its share of ups and downs for sure, and I want to promise you that it will all work out, but the best that I can promise is that you'll all learn from it and grow and then there will be time for decisions about next steps and then next steps. And there will be many many opportunities for support and sympathy and ...OJ ... from among these amazing people in this cohort.
ReplyDeleteYes -- you see that a key to getting Paley is her questions, her listening, her 100% of every child even while she wants some to change their behavior. And to evoke empathy in 6 year olds without lecturing or punishing? She's *teaching* not controlling.
Insight? When my gaze is drawn to the distant sailboat (which looks suspiciously like a stack of unread papers out there on the horizon, speeding this way on the tide, but for a brief moment there...).
Did you notice how often with Paley the conversation ended with big question marks? There were not neat tidy conclusions to every conversation, no hugs as children came to deeper insight. Days ended with discomfort and apprehension and more questions. That kid who stopped short (I did something similar once in a bike race - -just started the sprint way to early thinking I was at the finish. 2k later....) in race would be unlikely, under any circumstance, to feel better at that point.
And as a teacher, you best goal may be to give him another perspective to think about as he sorts it all out on the time line he needs. And then to prod him toward yet another layer of understanding once he's past the first pain...
That's teaching, right?
And yes, it's full of judgment calls, full of ethical dilemmas, full of the potential for kids to learn lessons so much bigger that the math or history in front of them.
If it weren't, we'd just be reading the scripts that others want us to read, on the schedules they want us to follow.
You don't want that, right?
Now, where's that waiter? My cup seems to be empty.
Oh.. there he is.... and what IS that on his tie?
Yes that is teaching....and when I re-read my hectometer comment to the kid, I laughed outloud becuase who the heck knows what a hectometer is? I even missed it as 10 hectometers is WAAAY to long for a sprint.
ReplyDeleteGood points on all and thanks for the insight my solo reader. I too gaze towards sailboats, the catamaran types that float in the bahamas!!