Aug

14

I Used to Be Naive

Filed Under Goals | 2 Comments

If you were to ask me what my goals for my at risk students are, I’d have to say the answer would pretty much depend on which day you asked me. On a good day, most days thankfully, I’d say I want my students to be happy, self-actualized persons. On a bad day, I’d say I just want them to be taxpayers. On a bad day, I don’t care if they’re happy or not. I just want them to graduate and pay taxes. Pretty cynical, I’d say. But, I never used to be like that. I used to be naive.

When I first started teaching, I wanted my students to love poetry. Yes, poetry. I “knew” that if I introduced poetry to them in the just right way, they’d love it as much as I did. (See, I told you I used to be naive.) When I told my Department Head one of my goals was to get my students to love poetry, he looked at me somewhat sternly and advised me that my goal should be to make my students taxpayers. If I made them taxpayers, I would be doing my job. I was appalled. What a cynic! I hoped I’d never be like that. Ironically, today my goal is to help my students become taxpayers, but with a twist- taxpayers happy in their jobs and in their lives.

How do I go about doing this? I spend a lot of time helping my students get to know themselves. In class, they discover their strengths and weaknesses and how to use this knowledge to help themselves become successful, in school and out. My students discover that :

  1. Successful people have goals. Having a goal is something to aim for, something to do, something to look forward to.
  2. Successful people know their strengths and weaknesses. They use their strengths to help them be successful. There’s no point in working at a job that entails a lot of math if you hate math. You’re not going to be good at it or happy doing it.
  3. Successful people persevere until they reach their goal. They don’t quit when the going gets tough. They dig deep and keep going until they succeed.
  4. Successful people have emotional support. They have people in their lives who are there for them in the good times and in the bad. You can’t do it alone.
  5. Successful people advocate for themselves. They stand up for themselves and make sure that what has to happen does happen.

Once my students are aware of the characteristics of successful people, I give them the opportunity to develop and strengthen these characteristics. My lessons are all about: discovering strengths, weaknesses and interests; setting realistic goals; developing and practicing perseverance; improving people skills; and, developing and applying self-advocacy skills. My grade eleven and twelve students use what they have learned to plan for the future of work or post secondary school; my grade nine and ten student use what they have learned to help them stay in school and graduate. Now, I’d like to be able to say that all my at risk students graduate, get jobs they like and are happy with their lives. I’d like to say that, but remember I used to be naive.

Aug

12

Don’t Blame the Lettuce-Blaming Doesn’t Help

Filed Under Behaviour Management, Special Education | 10 Comments

Don’t blame the lettuce. What? Earlier this week, I was in my local book store poking around in the books on a table at the back of the store, and I came across Thich Nhat Hanh’s book Peace Is Every Step. I picked it up, opened it at page 78 and started to read


When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don’t blame the lettuce. You look into reasons it is not doing well. It may need fertilizer, or more water, or less sun. You never blame the lettuce. Yet if we have problems with our friends or our family, we blame the other person. But if we know how to take care of them, they will grow well, like lettuce. Blaming has no positive effect at all, nor does trying to persuade using reason and argument. That is my experience. No blame, no reasoning, no argument, just understanding. If you understand, and you show that you understand, you can love, and the situation will change.


Since I’m an avid gardener, this caught my eye. It’s true. I don’t blame a plant when it doesn’t grow well. Why would I? It’s also true that blaming family and friends when I have a problem doesn’t help much either. Hanh’s got that right!


If a plant isn’t thriving, I examine it carefully to determine its needs and then change the care I have been giving it so that it can grow well. Sometimes I water it more; sometimes I water it less. Sometimes I even change its location. I do everything in my power to help it thrive. I certainly don’t blame it.

If students aren’t thriving, I try to do the same thing. I try to determine their needs and then give them the care that is necessary for them to thrive. I try not to blame them. Blaming doesn’t help. Kids and plants- for me it’s the same thing.

Aug

8

Camp I Can

Filed Under Behaviour Management, Special Education | 4 Comments

I loved the idea of Camp I Can from the first moment I heard about it. Camp I Can is a new innovative summer school program for high school students who do not complete their credits during the regular school year. The idea is that kids who are really struggling with a particular subject can complete their credits while at the same time having fun doing it. The students do school work for part of the day and fun activities like crafts, building models, playing games etc. for the rest of the day. Numeracy and literacy skills are imbedded in these fun activities so that the kids earn their credit while improving their numeracy and literacy skills at the same time. What a wonderful idea. It was going to be at my school for the first time this summer, and I was going get to teach a math class. I could hardly wait.


It was one of the most difficult, but rewarding things I have ever done. I have tons of qualifications and tons of teaching experience with at risk kids- over twenty years as a matter of fact. I have my Special Education Specialist in Behaviour, I taught kids in jail, and I taught at risk kids in regular schools. I knew what needed to be done.


First, I had the kids complete a “Getting to Know You” questionnaire so I could get a sense of where these kids were coming from. I knew they hated math, but I wanted to know more than that. A number of kids told me that they are always rude to all of their teachers. I guess it’s better to be a really bad kid in school than to be a failure in school. At least that way, they’re good at something even is it’s being bad. I told them that I didn’t believe that they were like that because they didn’t seem like that to me, which was true.

The first day, I talked about my expectations: I would treat them with respect, and they in turn would treat me and each other with respect. That was the only rule. I believe in the KISS principle. I didn’t have to encourage them to be respectful too often. Each time there was an incident, I told them in a very kind way ( except for three times when I lost it) that they were being disrespectful to me (or to someone else, whatever the case was) while I had not been disrespectful to them. That obviously was a very powerful thing to say and do because their behaviour improved. I also caught them being good whenever I could. I find that catching kids being good really improves their behaviour. There’s too much focus on the negative. By the last week, I don’t think I had to remind them more than once a day to be respectful, which was great given how impulsive some of my kids are. We actually started to have a good time in class, and even better the kids started to learn math. There was lots of laughter and lots of learning.


My students were so creative. I am in awe of their creativity and told them so. They found ways to amuse themselves while at the same time driving me to distraction. The lesson on measurement and graphing using remote controlled cars really caught their attention. Everyone was engaged and enjoying themselves. I wanted to introduce an element of fun into the math class to help motivate these kids, and I succeeded beyond my wildest dreams.


Who knew that one of the kids would drive a car into the hall and down the stairs, play chicken trying to crash two cars together, tie helium balloons to the cars and drive them every which way. What were they thinking! What was I thinking! They’d obviously seen too many special effects on TV. I just watched it all in wonder and amazement and decided to go with the flow and let them have their fun for the first part of the class, and then settled down to the lesson. They created a race track using masking tape, measured the speed of the different cars over different distances and graphed the results on a line graph learning terms like independent and dependent variables. They were so proud of themselves, and I was …exhausted.

At times, I felt like I was on some kind of survivor- reality- teacher TV show. Where did these kids get all that energy? I wanted to take a nap when I got home after being with them for the day. But, you know as the four weeks progressed we really bonded. It was wonderful to see the smiling faces and hear their laughter on the last day of Camp I Can.

Do I think Camp I Can was a worthwhile experience for the kids? I certainly do. I saw the kid’s self-esteem blossom. They came to class. No one skipped any of the twenty days, although sometimes some of them were late. But hey… I couldn’t help but think about that kid who told me that I could help him learn by making him want to come to school. I think I did. The kids came, had fun and learned. It will be interesting to see what happens in the Fall when they aren’t going to Camp I Can.


Do I think Camp I Can was a worthwhile experience for me? I certainly do. It gave me an opportunity to walk my talk. I was able to prove it was possible to make kids want to come to school and learn. Make no mistake, it wasn’t easy. I had to dig deep. But I believed in what I was doing, and I was going to make it work. I will, however, be making some practical suggestions for some changes to the structure of program so that next summer The Camp I Can teacher will not find the experience too taxing. After all, not everyone is as obsessive as I am.

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