Opportunity is PIP!

Perception

Interpretation

Perspective

Why is it that there are two kinds of educators?

Ones that perceive their students as the enemy? They’re out to get me.

The others perceive their students as wonderful individuals. They’re our future.

When I first started teaching, I ate lunch in the Teacher’s Lounge with my colleagues. As a new teacher, I thought this would be a great source of information on classroom management and a better understanding of our Administration. I quickly decided to eat by myself in my office. I found that the more I listened to the burnt out naysayers the more it affected the way I interacted with not only my students but my Administrators as well. I didn’t like who I was becoming.

It was like I was living chapter 1 in the book “Art of Possibilities” by the Zanders.

I was listening and watching my colleagues stuck in this jack-n-the-box persona. They stayed in their little rut (their box) and periodically would jump out and interact with their students only to go back in. I put up a poster in my room that says “Think Outside the Box”. When I get into a little funk, I look at that poster and think OK how can I turn this situation in to a positive. And you know what? It works! The green fog funk blows away and I see clearly again. I also looked at my colleagues and made some observations. One very important one that I found in the naysayers was that they weren’t willing to find out what makes our student body tick. They were letting their observations of the gangbanger style cloud their perceptions of these young people. So, again I found ways to get to know my students. And you know what I found out? Under all their brave bravado were a bunch of scared young people (did you know scared, as in I’m afraid, and scared, as in I’ve been hurt and I’m not going to let someone else in that will disappoint me again, are the same spelling. How apropos is that!)? .

So, now we look at the possibilities. These children are our future. Do we nurture them as creative, beautiful individuals or lump them into one group? I know what it’s like to be lumped into a group- the teenagers. I choose to look at each one of my students as an individual. So, when I have this student that is always thoughtful, respectful, do anything he can to help stand up in class after an assignment has been made and tell me in no uncertain terms where I can put that assignment I can look at him and know that he is hurting and lashing out at the one person he can count on to love him unconditionally. I could have chosen to call security or given him the understanding that he needed. I choose the later. BTW, that student came to me the next day and asked to talk to me. We went out in the hallway. He started crying (this young man is nose guard on the high school football team) and telling me that the night before, he was trying to protect his mom and little brother from the mother’s boyfriend who was beating the mother. He didn’t know why he lashed out at me but he was very sorry.