What Lessons Did You Learn This Year?
January 1, 1970
Welcome to Issue Sixteen!Summer days are meant to be savored! If you are teaching, on vacation, or even taking summer classes for the next few weeks, June and July are good months to reflect on the past year and look ahead to plan how to be an inspiring teacher for your new students this fall. Because of this relaxed schedule, there will only be one newsletter for the months of July and June. Expect the next one in early August!
"If a seed of a lettuce will not grow, we do not blame the lettuce. Instead, the fault lies with us for not having nourished the seed properly." ~ Buddhist Proverb
What Lessons Did You Learn This Year?
Now that “Testing Season” is just about officially over and, along with it, another school year, many teachers have time and opportunity to finally take a breath and reflect on the events of the past few months. Even as we tidy file cabinets, tear down faded bulletin boards, and pack away pencils, many teachers will take the time to look back before we begin planning the new school year.
Most of us find it easy to focus on the mistakes we made. And we certainly made some mistakes. No teacher can go through a school year without making big and small wrong decisions. No matter how wonderful your teaching experience was, you’ll always be able to do it better next year.
So, what did you learn this year? Not all lessons have to come from direct experience or from cringe-inducing mistakes. Some of your lessons could have been ones you just needed a little nudge to recall while others may have been those wonderful, cosmic, ah-ha! epiphanies. How you came to your new understanding or knowledge is not as important as the fact that you did. You’ve been changed in a fundamental way as a result of the lessons this school year has brought.
“Teaching kids to count is fine, but teaching them what counts is best.” ~Bob Talbert
Take a few moments to think about how this school year has changed you and your teaching practices. You’ll be a better teacher for it. Perhaps you can use the lessons in the list below to spur your thoughts as you reflect on the lessons you’ve learned this year.
Fifty Lessons You May Have Learned
1. If you’ll just listen to your students before taking action, you will avoid having to backtrack on many decisions that you had convinced yourself were sound ones.
2. Reinforcing good behavior is much more fun than punishing bad behaviors.
3. Parents are serious when they tell you that they would rather hear about a problem when it is small and solvable instead of a major headache. Don’t hesitate to call home. Do it early. Do it often.
4. It is crucial that you teach students how to do their work. They can’t learn study skills without guidance.
5. Asking students to tell you what they have learned from a lesson is more likely to elicit enduring knowledge than if you tell them what you think they should have learned.
6. Passing out materials can take forever and be a huge hassle until you figure out how to do it efficiently.
7. If a child misbehaves, sometimes all you have to do is move that student to another seat.
8. You have to give a rubric when actually making an assignment for it to be effective in guiding students as they make choices about their work.
9. It is always wise to think before you speak and to think again before you act.
10. Every now and then you should reexamine your classroom rules and procedures. Are they still working for you and your students?
11. Few students can succeed without your high expectations. You will get what you expect, so you may as well aim high.
12. Open-ended questions can be loads of fun for everyone in the class—including the teacher.
13. If you want to take a new approach to a topic under study, you can change the process or the product or both.
14. Document, document, document. Even the stuff that you think you will never need has a way of becoming necessary later.
15. Deeper understandings usually take longer to acquire. You can’t rush substance.
16. It’s important to laugh with your students.
17. Students will beg all week for free time and as soon as they have some, announce that they are bored.
18. Even young students need to be reminded of their future goals so that they will stay on task.
19. Learned helplessness is not an easy attitude to combat. It takes patience and determination and lots of time to undo its stubborn comfort. Be persistent. It’s worth the effort.
20. The worst behaved child in your class deserves your best efforts.
21. Determining the appropriate level of challenge in an assignment takes lots of practice.
22. Ask students to focus on essential questions and you will reap unexpected rewards.
23. Take a problem solving approach to discipline issues and you will be closer to having command of a situation.
24. The paperwork load at the end of the school year is truly staggering. Take it one page at a time.
25. Appealing to your students’ different learning styles can stretch a lesson to unforeseen depths.
26. For most students to consider work meaningful, they need to know how they can benefit from it right now.
27. For some students, a teacher is the lifeline to a world of possibility.
28. Students have a keen sense of fair play. They have an even keener awareness of unfair play.
29. Being positive about your school, your colleagues, your students, your classroom, and your workload beats being negative any day of the week.
30. Don’t hesitate to give a student a second chance. And hope for one in return.
31. When things are tough, remind yourself that what is bothering you probably won’t matter a year from now.
32. Who you are is more important to a child than what you say.
33. Three days is the absolute longest that a set of papers should remain ungraded and unreturned.
34. Teach tolerance every day. It takes a thousand small steps, but eventually they will add up.
35. Once that excited hum of busy students fills a classroom, you will find it easier to get out of bed and come back to school the next day.
36. Always have a backup plan. Your probably need a backup plan for your backup plan. Actually, having a file of backup plans is a great idea.
37. Teachers have to choose to do what’s best for their students, not what’s easiest.
38. Respect comes from the many small things you do in the classroom every day.
39. Teach your students an important life skill: to clean up after themselves every day.
40. Students need to be taught listening skills. Just a few minutes every day will make a big difference.
41. Sarcasm is an unfair weapon to use against a child.
42. Active learners rarely have time to complain.
43. No single approach holds all the answers. It takes a multifaceted methodology to reach every child every day.
44. If you smile at a child who is getting ready to misbehave, you will often confuse that child into good behavior instead.
45. Teaching, in order to be successful, must be a purposeful activity.
46. If you want to reduce discipline issues, connect with your students. If you want to connect with your students, listen more than you speak.
47. You have to create a reasonable policy about how and when students are allowed to leave the room and stick to it.
48. Teachers who can learn to accept constructive criticism gracefully--no matter who gives it--will avoid burnout.
49. Setting group goals is an excellent way to have students figure out how to work well together.
50. The ability to see the future in the face of a child is the sustaining hallmark of a great teacher.
“Every time you wake up and ask yourself, "What good things am I going to do today?" remember that when the sun goes down at sunset, it takes a part of your life with it." ~Indian Proverb