Knowing You Did a Pretty Solid Job with Kids Because They Are Appalled at You

In the last day or two of school, as we had our various celebrations and reflections on the year, I showed a clip from the Fred 3 movie.  My boys like the movies and I can see the appeal through their eyes.  The kids in my class, however, were appalled at the sentiment of the song - "The Last Day of School is the Best Day of School."  A few sang along, a few joked about the message, but most were outwardly repulsed by the song's lyrics.

End of the Year Letter

Each year I had sent out letters to parents at the end of the school year.  Copied in below was one of them.

To 2^nd Grade Parents of Mr. Coleman’s Class,

As we come to the close of an amazing year of growth, achievement, and thrilling learning I am compelled to write a few words to all the parents who made possible this fantastic journey.  During the reminiscing and review of the photographs I took during the year, I was struck primarily with acute disappointment; it seemed no matter how many hundreds of moments I captured I could never accurately represent all the excitement and big breakthrough moments that happened daily in our classroom.  The kids exceeded established expectations of what 2^nd graders should and could do in terms of critical thinking, maturity, study habits, perspective, self-control, and wisdom.  The support and input from the parents has been the foundation for this exponential climb.  Everyday I tried to push each student and myself to make lessons and activities unique and memorable.  The atmosphere we created together became something other teachers, students, and parents talked about, and we thrived on being a special class others wished to be a part of.  The students earned privileges and undertook adventures others openly yearned for.

In many ways I am not a good teacher when judged by fellow teachers and the tiered education system.  I do not want my students to have the same opportunities and experiences as their peers.  I want a 2^nd grade year that is superior and impossible to replicate or emulate.  In the philosophical underpinnings of education there rages debates over the merits of being a “friend” with students or being a “teacher.”  I think of every one of my students as my son or daughter, and as such I am uninterested in seeing them become merely competent, obedient, or reach some consumer oriented pinnacle where they are celebrated for making “informed choices” in their purchasing and consuming patterns (look where those orientations have taken the country!).  With all honesty and sincerity, I want your child to be better than all the others, and I want to be the best teacher he or she will ever have.  I saw everyday with your child as an artistic performance, and my stories, my humor, my hard sell on education, my authentic relationship, and ever-rising standards were meant to see just how far we could go.

And far we did go.  Our effort to do more than the bare minimum was astonishing: our writing abilities were better than 3^rd and 4^th graders I have taught at other schools, our empathy to each other and our family was astonishing.  I hear positive parent feedback and feel the support, but I wonder if parents really know the depth and breadth of the scholarly disposition many students developed this year.  Students asking thoughtful questions, complimenting each other on new ideas, actual spontaneous applauding when a friend gets a tough new concept, offering to help, or outright defending each other if someone was unfairly reprimanded.  I told parents at the start of the year I would undoubtedly make mistakes with each and every child.  I made hundreds of mistakes and took great pains to point them out to the students, for humility, and for a model of self-correction and revision.  I admonished them, “we all have our struggles, I do, you do – that is what we are here to work on.  This is the place to work on those struggles.”  They completely understood what I was saying; self-analysis and change that many adults would fear facing.

I know parents spend long hours doing the hard work to build strong students with positive feelings about school.  I am very aware that I am a relatively small nine-month period in the education of your child and that before my class you have taught your children for those formative years and that after my class you will continue being the primary and most influential teacher for decades to come (yes, decades).  I have appreciated the many parents who volunteer for field trips, class parties, special events, and who show up daily to help with whatever reading workshop activity we are exploring.  I respect parents that spend the time to write me notes, call me, talk with me personally, or send in gifts to show they understand the effort I put into my students.  The Teacher Appreciation Week this year was one of the most heartwarming and generous; in lieu of flowers (that die L) I was awash in Diet Dr. Pepper, peanut butter cups, and real food every day.  The notes and gifts from students were so numerous I felt that I could never thank everyone.  I would be completely unable to have the successes, and I would not be able to meet the inevitable struggles of teaching, if it were not for the parents who are right there with me, involved in the nurturing and growth of children.  Daily.  Weekly.  Constantly.

The reality is that during the school year I spend more time with your children than mine, and they made the exchange worth it.  When I look at the pictures I want for my sons to have so many of the qualities I see the kids in my class exhibit: kindness, intelligence, and determination.  There is no comparison - these are the best kids – but word such truth carefully among friends with kids the same age.  It is a shock to see what your children have done with this year.

Thank you for sharing this chapter of your child’s life adventure.

Mr. Coleman

Pie-In-Face!

Photos of Pie-In-Face raffle I volunteer for each year at the Prairie carnival.  Fun way to help raise some money for the school while also creating a memorable experience for a lot of kids.

 

What Type of Label Do You Want for Your Child?

This article at The Week, How labels like 'black' and 'working class' shape your identity, is especially interesting to me as I am now fully invested in balancing the full-on parenting and teaching moments of kids with brains actively perceiving, creating, and begging for labels of all the new concepts and things in their worlds.  The acquisition of new words, that was a trickle in toddler years and impressed relatives at holidays just after entering preschool becomes, in the early elementary years, an exponential flood.  This is especially true for kids born to parents who use a large vocabulary around and with the baby (mentioned in this post).  The Week article exists at the intersection we can see in these two realities: Kids are busying acquiring words about the world around them, and, Kids are involved in explaining what they are doing and why (more on that below) and beginning to understand themselves, their sense of self and identity.

Words everywhere to explain and label the world.  Being developmentally centered on your ideas, your experiences, and your actions.  The explaining of what they did or why they did something is often taking place during discipline  "Why did you take that away from him?" "Why didn't you put the plate in the sink?" "Why did you do that?" - We are demanding a verbal accounting of personality, thoughts, and narratives from children awash in words.  We have heard them parrot back what we have lectured.  We have heard them give a possibly age-appropriate response.  And we have seen misapplication (or misappropriation) of newly acquired concepts when the child is flexing his or her lines of word associations to offer an actual reflective answer.  The words offered up can (and do, according to the article) become the words the kids use to explain themselves; to define themselves; to know themselves.  In a decade or so they might have high school teachers or university instructors introducing the psychological construct of the moment you were present for - when the student began to believe certain words were about him or her, that certain words were him or her.  The labels became the reality.  The Week article is primarily discussing the accuracy of the labels, where they come from, and what damage can be done.  A discussion on undoing those labels inside yourself is an entirely different discussion.  One best had with Alan Watts with his talks on not eating the menu for the food.