Five of the Most Important Things I Do

We had a wonderful day at school today. Not only was it a hot lunch day, but we had interesting discussions in our ethics and Anabaptist history classes. There were also just a few occurrences that made me reflect and be thankful that I’m a teacher and glad that I have the students that I am blessed to have. Here’s my list:

Take the time to ask good questions and give your students time to answer.

Today I specifically asked my students a few casual questions like “What are you looking forward to this weekend?” But I also asked them questions such as “Why were the Catholic priests and monks frustrated with the Anabaptists?” “Why did the Anabaptists stick so vehemently to their convictions?” It’s safe to make an educated guess in my class, too. That sometimes gives us more ideas that lead to analyzing a situation. (Bloom’s taxonomy, anyone?)  Spending good time discussing the Bible and doctrinal issues ranks at the top of important things teachers should do.

Stop and take an extra class period to go over a quiz or test that students didn’t do as well on as they should have. 

Let them see what they did wrong and then give them another clean copy of it (or type a new worksheet for them with just the questions or problems that most of them got wrong), and teach them how to be “good test takers” as I call it. Model the techniques they need to learn to be more successful next time and have them actually do it on the paper so that they completely understand it.

For us today, it was to make a “secret code”—a visual for every direction that they are supposed to do. That way they won’t leave out one of the tasks in a section.

They also were taught how not to “pounce” on grammar tasks. If the quiz asks the student to find the adverbs or the prepositional phrases, then I teach them not to “pounce” on just the adverbs and prepositional phrases. First, we find and underline the subjects and the verbs and look for complements and mark them. Next, we cross off all the adjectives that describe the subject or the complements. Then, we mark all of the prepositional phrases. Finally, whatever words are leftover are probably adverbs, but we check those too. How did he speak? He spoke softly. “Softly” tells how he spoke, so it adds to the verb, so it’s an adverb. Doing that will get students much better results than pouncing on just one item. The arrow we drew by the directions will remind us to draw an arrow to the verb that the adverb modifies.

Sidenote: The grades that they earned on that quiz are the grades that go in the gradebook. Although they were required to learn what they did wrong and how to fix it, that did not change their grades. Hopefully, they learned well and will do much better next time.

Take time to notice and appreciate the unusual.

Stop and observe the baby toads climbing up the classroom window (and take a few minutes to go outside to see them), as well as the white butterflies and the monarchs flying out in the ballfield during PE and praise your students when they find a bizarre orange fungus growing by second base and bring it to you to show you.  

Students shouldn’t just sit at their desks all day plodding along with paper and pencil. That is important, but there is so much more to education—music, art, and PE, and finding gross fungi in the ballfield.

Laugh in the rain.

As we were lined up to come in from recess, singing our Bible memory verse (every single student in grades 3rd and up got a 100, by the way, and we are really picky and take off 1 point for every wrong word), the clouds suddenly broke loose a torrential downpour on us. We laughed and ran singing up the stairs and into the building. Sometimes things just happen. It’s fun to laugh and enjoy the unusualness of the situation and then begin anatomy class with a good poster of the skeletal system.

Send them off with a smile.

By the end of the week, we teachers are usually exhausted after pushing ourselves to do a great job while we are on duty all week. And so, even though I am exhausted by the end of the week, things just don’t seem right unless I stand on the porch by the door, dismissing the students, waving at their parents as they drive past, and telling my students that I hope they have a wonderful weekend, because I really do.