"While we try to teach kids about life, they teach us what life is all about."

Nov 06, 2008 21:50

After having once read Rafe Esquith's There Are No Shortcuts prior to giving much thought to teaching, much less to being a teacher, I have rediscovered his books (including the newest Teach Like You're Hair's On Fire) in Seoul, South Korea -- and I am enraptured.

His insight is so much more relevant (and it was already incredibly relevant) when I have a place, a lab, as it were, to experiment with his tactics and give them my own spin.

Here's my shameless plug: ALL TEACHERS, PARENTS, and PEOPLE WHO ARE AT A LOSS AS TO HOW TO HELP DEVELOP PEOPLE WHO ARE HARD-WORKING, CONSIDERATE, MORAL, AND BALANCED -- YOU MUST READ RAFE ESQUITH!!

With his books fortifying my resolve and spinning my creative wheels, my relationships with my students have all improved a hundredfold - I'm reaching them in ways I never though possible and having a fantastic time doing it.

The kids pick up on my energy and run with it - once I let go of ideas of what they are or are not capable of, they surprise me every day with what they can do.

Take today for instance. Having read up on the necessity of preparing kids properly for learning experiences, I put together a preliminary lesson (granted, still more rushed than it should have been, but better than in the past where I kind of threw the kids into experiences and expected them to plumb their full depths - as IF) about the election, the electoral process, voting, America's history, the 2008 campaign, and relevant vocabulary. We talked about the key players, about the issues leading up to this historic election, and about the result. Then we watched Obama's acceptance speech. The full 18+ minutes of it. In English.

And what I got as a result of not assuming they couldn't do it and preparing them properly for getting the most that they could out of it was a room full of second graders who speak English as a second language listening in rapt attention, following along on the printout I'd made of the text of the speech, circling words they didn't know and wanted to discuss, and telling me to "Stop pausing to ask questions! We just want to watch the whole thing without stopping! We can talk after!"

They clapped with joy at the end.

My.God.it.was.beautiful.

Thanks, Rafe, and Lois Watson, who first led me to your door.
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