Stop Shouting Already!

Lessons Learned

Gentleness

In a world that shouts, incessantly argues, and demands to be right and first and best and every other superlative seemingly worthy of claiming, I believe it might be a good time to step out of the fray, to willingly wait, to patiently listen, to calmly respond, to humbly serve, and to be secure enough to be gentle. The bombastic, super aggressive personality and approach to life and living is truly obnoxious at best and hate-stirring, blood pressure elevating and ineffective to boot. Why do we so unreservedly choose such immature and non-productive behavior? Why? Do we erroneously assume that this unflattering and out-of-control behavior is a suitable MO for communication? Can we not hear our own anger and frustration in this attack-ish tone? Can we not see the combative response this evokes in others? Why not try gentleness. It feels so much better. Gentleness quiets the heart and stills the soul. Gentleness beckons cooperation, collaboration, and a lovely esprit de corps. Gentleness invites the building of a bridge and risks the extending of a hand to lend support and hope. Gentleness heals. Gentleness is as a balm to another’s wounded spirit.  But, despite our intellectual understanding of the merits of gentleness, the world still shouts and we, in our knee jerk reaction, shout back. At every age there’s shouting. Recently I noticed just how much cartoons shout at our children; they will undoubtedly live what they learn. We shout our frustrated and hurried “good byes and have a good days” to our little ones as they collect yet another tardy slip at the door, thus beginning their days in disappointment and despair. Families shout because being right takes priority to being loving. Spectators at sporting events shout at referees because a public temper tantrum is an impressive way to support one’s team. Coaches, directors, and teachers shout because the number of decibels of vocal volume is directly proportional to the desire of the athletes, cast members, or students to obey.  Shouting is apparently power.  Power, who doesn’t want it? Kids shout at parents, siblings, teachers, etc. etc. etc. because everyone else is shouting.  They have been well taught.  We don’t shout at our home, not because we are some sort of wallflower, mousey type of family, but rather because shouting hurts feelings, and it definitely hurts ears. If a student shouts at me, which hasn’t happened much in my thirty years of teaching, I speak calmly and gently back. We need to breathe. We need to relax. We need to count to ten, take a walk, or listen for a minute to our own precious heartbeat. Life is a great gift and gentleness is a way of handling life with honor, grace and respect. Choose this day to be gentle and then reap the wonderful rewards of the peace and joy this brings.

Running On E

Lessons Learned

Just Say Thanks

It’s really quite simple.  When the car is running out of gas, you fill the tank; that is, if you want the car to continue moving. People are not dissimilar to this with respect to appreciation and encouragement. Kind, gentle, affirming words fill the soul with energizing joy despite the age of the hearer. And kind, gentle, affirming words are free of charge; no need to add a line to the budget.  Balm to the soul. Impetus to run a little farther.  Uplifting to the heart.  The push to carry on, to try harder, to jump higher, to get up again, to not walk away.  Sometimes, all that’s needed is thank you. And yet it seems we have a strange propensity to hoard these sorts of words, as if uttering them diminishes us or will serve to arrest aspiration in the hearer. We, however, freely and generously pour out our unsolicited opinions that bite and snip, our whiney complaints, and our interminably long lists of chores and orders, in much the same manner as a spigot stuck on high. Is it really easier and more beneficial to beat people down with the work harder speech than it is to offer the encouragement or appreciation speech and watch them work harder of their own volition in response to verbal affirmation? Which stirs the most meaningful motivation? Which builds and nourishes the strongest loyalty? Which empowers for the long-term? In our classrooms, which, in obsessive pursuit of metric excellence, have frequently become places of scripted interaction driven by the time constraints associated with high-stakes testing, the unscripted but life-giving words of affirmation which desperately  need to be said and heard often get lost in a stressful flurry. Unless I tell you it’s not good, assume that it is good and keep at it. What sort of motivation does that limp verbiage inspire? Emptiness is the result of that limp verbiage. And no one can run on empty.  We direly need to stop. We direly need to breathe. We truly and absolutely need to look one another in the eyes and speak encouragement and affirmation and appreciation to one another. Students. Colleagues.  Family members. Neighbors. We’re running on empty and the fuel to share, the fuel we need is free. Why are we waiting?

The esprit de corps of singing...

Lessons Learned

Singing Together Can Help Us Grow

Six languages in one first grade classroom.  Swedish. Greek. Japanese. Afganistan. Spanish. English.  Our hope was to teach them all to read.  Our priority was to build a community, to communicate, but the first few days of school made that priority seem quite remote and that hope nearly impossible.  We had no means by which to connect and our only apparent common ground right then was that we shared a classroom, a cold, lonely one at that. After lunch each day, we had a twenty minute window of time during which we played acoustic instrumental music, and the students were encouraged to either look at a picture book, quietly draw a picture, or simply relax and listen to the music. Surprisingly, most students opted to listen to the music. It was calm, soothing, peaceful, and biased toward no one language. Each mind processes music in its own language.  Perhaps music held a key. We wrote a song about counting to ten. We asked each student to count to ten in his or her primary language, which we phonetically wrote down.  We all learned how to count to ten in each of our class languages with great and enthusiastic help from each other. It was a spectacular song, made exponentially better by the robust participation and growing esprit de corps of our classroom community.  By sharing a little piece of each other’s language, we were able to share a little piece of each other’s heart.  Our community grew. Our trust grew. Our learning grew. We became readers.  We became friends. We shared a song.

Missing The Boat With Meaningful, Relevant Learning

Lessons Learned

Relational Education

One of the most significant outages of metrics driven educational accountability, as I see it, is the absence of time for relational connection to the students.  There simply are not enough hours in the school day to accommodate all of the paperwork that needs to be accomplished in terms of a variety of assessments, high-stakes testing with endless prep for that, and documentation on each issue of each student so that suitable amounts of paper trails can cover every measurable aspect. Information is not the enemy, however. We have a tendency towards the extreme, and that is the problem.  The “go big or go home” mentality which drives our culture and permeates our every moment, pushes and extends the wide-sweeping swing of the pendulum of trends to new extremes that readily enslave us all. We seem to have lost all sense of moderation and balance and have traded that for superlative amounts of the next new-fangled idea, whatever that may be. Excessive, obsessive amounts of metrics fastidiously gathered for the purposes of something that may or may not be working relative to educating students successfully is fast becoming ridiculous. And what has been traded for the boxes full of pointless data which will sit and ultimately become kindling for the fire resulting from the spark of tomorrow’s next theory? Show and tell has been traded.  Arts have been traded. Field trips and special curiosity-driven projects have been traded.  PE, an extra recess and normal-length lunch hours have been traded. All things that make education real and human and meaningful and relatable have been traded. That is a gargantuanly pricey trade. The numbers have added little besides significant stress and have taken beauty and connection. In thirty years of teaching, I have sadly witnessed exponentially increasing numbers of relational breakdowns all around but beginning with families. Kids are resilient is what the experts all say and it’s true to a certain extent but it is not the whole story. Scars. Fear. Pain. Insecurity.  And on and on. These are the rest of the story. These are what students carry to the classroom, to recess, to the nurse’s office. These are the things that tummy aches are made of. These are the things that stir in bullies. These are the things that result in high distractibility and disengagement.  These things hurt deeply and permanently and affect every single aspect of school. These things are not documented alongside reading scores, but they influence every assessment.  All of the traded elements mentioned above provide balm for the deep hurts such as these, and without them our burdened children merely go superficially through educational motions. To talk, to interact, to share, to relate, to express, to create, these are meaning-making attributes of education that inspire engagement and foster affirmation that in turn will encourage confidence and desire to discover.  Swing pendulum, swing away from the numbers that allow decision-makers to enthusiastically pat one another on the back, and instead swing toward those deep things that honestly reach and nurture students. We yearn for connection; it’s a human need, and it cannot be extracted from educating children without suffering an unfathomable price.  We are there.