Thread: Marco...Polo-Reaching All My Students

Hi Rebared,

Wow! Tough questions!

I'm going to tell you a story about a DARE police officer I once knew in Austin. I remember the day the young officer first came to our school. He went to a fifth grade (inner-city) class to talk about the dangers of crack cocaine - and the students laughed at him. They openly mocked him. They ridiculed everything he had to say. They were grossly disrespectful and the classroom teacher apparently let the kids do whatever they wanted to do during this officer's lesson. The kids ate him alive.

I found the officer in the faculty lounge crying.

How often do you see a police officer cry?

I closed the door and listened to his story.

I then told him that the hardest thing any teacher has to learn is that sometimes - despite our best effort and our best intentions - we can't reach all of the kids.

We don't have control over their lives at home.

We don't have control over how their families treat them.

We have no control over the social cess pools that some of them live in.

All we can do as professional educators is to provide a safe, welcoming, nurturing climate at school.

I told the officer that he was addressing inner city 5th grade students who were already hard core gang bangers. I said that some of the fifth graders had already made up their minds about drugs - but hopefully the officer's message reached some of the kids.

I suggested that if the message even reached one child - given the environment they lived in, then there was reason to hope.

With regards to your own particular situation, rule number one is that you have to take care of you.

Don't spend seven days a week working on the job. Give yourself at least one day off or you'll burn yourself out.

Don't stay up until midnight grading papers. Give yourself time to work after school and perhaps after dinner - but only up to a certain time and then cut it off.

Prioritize what you need to do. In other words, do what you NEED to do before the things you'd LIKE to do.

You won't get everything done. None of us ever do - but the things that have to be done will be done.

Teachers these days have too much on their plates. We're first and foremost - instructors ... but we're also counselors, child advocates, role models, social workers, and wardens. It's too much - and as our society places more and more responsibility on the shoulders of teachers while loudly talking about accountability - our profession is steadily losing teachers due to work related stress.

If you are feeling work related stress you should go talk to a doctor. I doubt if anyone knows what the national statistics are but I suspect a great many teachers are taking medication for work related stress.

The bottom line?

Take care of you. If you don't take care of yourself and you start falling apart, who will take care of your kids?

Be well and hang in there!

David

Thanks for the counseling David of Houston. It's comforting to know that others see the benefits of meeting students' emotional needs. I really wish our governing bodies would also see the merit rather than concentrating on test scores.

On the whole, I'm well-liked by most students. Fourth graders are spreading rumors that I'm moving from third grade to fifth grade next year. Principals move troubled students into my room (I now have 25 students to my co-workers' 23 and 19). Parents request me.

That's all well and good--makes me feel like I'm doing things right as far as children go--but perfectionist desires always get the best of me. I still have kids that aren't where they should be academically.

I want to know strategies to get the stubborn "Do I have to write a whole page?" students to work. I want to make the glossed over look of many students go away. I want a miracle!!!!

Okay, so I know that's impossible, but I'm in an active pursuit to find great strategies that will help all kinds make positive gains--gains I know they are capable of.

A friend of mine once said that just sitting in a classroom is a benefit to kids. They will learn because of and despite me. But I always wonder, have I inspired them to reach their potential?

You reach so many kids, you know that, they come back to see you even though they are in a different grade.

Think of it this way - that child is waiting for another very special teacher (just like you - but not you this time) to make a difference.

If you fixed them all - what would 4th grade have to work on with them?