Attempts are Important

In The worst from Seth Godin's Blogby Seth Godin states

“The worst golfer doesn’t even play.”

I remember talking to a high school basketball player and asking him if he got nervous when he tried to make a basket. Wasn’t he afraid that he would miss? He just looked at me with surprise. Then he let me know that he would never make a basket if he never tried. Better to try and miss than to never try at all.

This is what I want my students to learn in my class. I want them to be willing to try even if they might make a mistake.

I have watched students paralyzed with fear in case they make a mistake. They are afraid people will laugh at them and ridicule them. This has happened to them before and they have learned to protect themselves.

I start out by explaining everyone makes mistakes all of the time throughout their life. This is part of life and learning. We learn from our mistakes.

When a basketball player shoots for a basket and misses, he learns that the spot he aimed for was not the right spot. He keeps practicing until he finds the right spot. The right spot for him may not be the same spot for me because we are at different heights and have different strengths. When a player is practicing shots, does his team laugh at him when he misses? No, they encourage him to do better.

I want my students to be teammates. I want them to encourage each other and help them to be brave enough to try. I want my class to be a safe place where it is okay to make mistakes as long as we learn from them. I want to teach the students to be compassionate and understanding so they can help each.

When the class acts as a team and helps each other, everyone will be more successful.

How do you encourage your students to be a team? Please share.

Photo by Tom Briskey on Unsplash

Nurturer or Naysayer

In Nurturing Voices, Sioux share,

“Several of my students discovered their person had been told they shouldn't have the dream they dreamed.”

My husband is a nurturer. Whenever I have a crazy idea that I want to try, he always encourages me to give it a try. He never thinks of reasons why I shouldn’t try it. Of course, he is more logical than I am and when I bounce ideas off of him, he will come up with great questions to help me get the details right. When I try something and it doesn’t work out, he doesn’t say I told you so and instead tries to help me see what went wrong and how to do it better next time.

I confess that I’m not always a nurturer and tend to be more of a naysayer. I think of all the obstacles and reasons why something might not work. All my life I have been afraid of risk.

I do not want to instill my fear onto my students. I want them willing to take risks (that don’t harm anyone or anything). I want them to dream big and work towards their dreams.

My parents always said that if there was a want, there was a way. They were nurturers. They never thought that there was any reason we couldn’t achieve what we set out to do.

My parents couldn’t afford to send me to the college that I wanted to go and they let me know this when I first started talking about college. I wanted to go to a private out of state college since I was in elementary school. I knew that if I wanted to achieve my dream I had to keep my grades up and get scholarships. They encouraged me to do what I needed to do instead of squashing my dream and telling me that I couldn’t go there.

When my students share their dreams with me, I ask them questions. I try to be like my husband and encourage them to explain in more detail. I help them discover ways that they can work towards their dreams. Instead of throwing obstacles in their way, I think of ways to help them overcome their obstacles. I help prepare them to face obstacles that may occur so they can be ready to find their ways around them.

How do you nurture your students so they can work towards their dream? Please share.

Photo by Greg Rosenke on Unsplash

Helplessness

Many of my students with disabilities feel helpless especially when they are overwhelmed. For so many years they have faced many failures and very few successes. They have been judged by others including family and friends as being lazy or stupid. Every time they try and make an effort, they feel like they are kicked down. They start believing that maybe they are lazy and stupid so why bother even trying. Life looks hopeless to them.

I believe this is a feeling is learned helplessness and I spend a lot of time fighting it. I want to try to break this cycle and turn their lives around.

My words won’t do it because they have had so many years of practice hearing the negative words. Why should they believe me who they have only known for a short time while all the others in their world tell them differently? I could talk until I’m blue in the face but they won’t believe me. I have to find a way to show them.

I start by doing a lot of pretesting so I can find out their instructional levels. This is important because I want to begin with something they know how to do that is right at the edge of what they don’t know how to do. I want to do a lot of activities during the first couple of weeks that I know they can be successful doing. I praise and encourage them a lot during this time including phone calls home letting their family know how well they are doing. My students aren’t fooled though and are a little suspicious but I keep plodding on.

After I feel they are comfortable with my process, I slip in a few harder tasks that I know they can do successfully with my help. Again, a lot of praise and encouragement goes a long way. Some of my students are surprised they are successful but they are afraid to hope. During this time, I have to be very patient and encouraging with my students because they are waiting for the shoe to fall and failure to occur again. Eventually, I will have them do the work while slowly taking away my help. It is like teaching a child to ride a bicycle and you hold the bike for a while until you have to let go so they can do it on their own. This may take another month or two but it is important to be patient.

I spend a lot of time the whole year talking to the students about taking a risk and trying harder things because I’m here to help them. I won’t let them fail. If I see them falling, I will be there to catch them. If they fall down, I will be there to help them get up. They are not alone.

I explain that everyone faces failures but what they do after them is what counts. President Lincoln ran for different political offices several times before he eventually became President. He didn’t give up and his failures made him more determined to succeed. Even Bill Gates had several failures before he found Microsoft. The ones that you never hear about are the ones that gave up after failing.

Before long, my students will start adding successes to their list of things they do and will have more courage to learn new things. My next step is to teach them what to do when I am not there and they leave my classroom. How do they go about finding help for what they want to learn? This is an important step to teaching independence.

Eventually, their helplessness begins to fade away, and hope for success takes its place.

How do you battle helplessness? Please share.

Photo by Roi Dimor on Unsplash

Positive Emotional Environments

In The Importance of Emotions in Learning from @DavidGeurin Blog, David Geurin asks,

“What are ways you create a positive emotional environment in your classroom or school?  How do you set the tone each day for connection and care? What behaviors need to be addressed that are damaging the emotional environment?”

I think having a positive learning environment is important in a classroom and when I mentioned this to my husband, he asked me to explain what that meant. He is absolutely right. If I don’t know what it is, how can I create it or set the tone for it?

To me a Positive Emotional Environment is:

1.     A safe place to learn.

2.     A safe place to make mistakes.

3.     A safe place to learn from my mistakes.

4.     A place open to constructive criticism about my work.

5.     A place where criticism will not be personal.

6.     A place of understanding when our fellow students don’t succeed at first.

7.     A place to encourage our fellow students not to give up.

8.     A place to share information freely.

9.     A place to help fellow students figure out ways to overcome obstacles.

10.  A place to cheer our fellow students when they have a victory.

I think it is important to discuss this in the first class meeting. It may take a few days (or weeks) for students to learn that these are non-negotiables. This will set the tone for each day. Once students learn that this is important and follow these guidelines, I think our classroom becomes a positive learning environment.

If a student says negative statements about another student, I stop and explain that this behavior is not acceptable. If they have constructive criticism about other students work, they may share it and give suggestions on how to make it better. I also work on modeling these behaviors for the students. When a victory occurs, I have everyone stop what they are doing and have everyone give a round of applause. I explain to them that even though the individual victory goes to the student who did the work, everyone else deserves the applause for being supportive. At first, students feel a little uncomfortable doing this but by the end of the quarter, everyone is used to this and really gets into it.

How do you encourage a positive emotional environment? Please share.

Photo by Katrina on Unsplash

An Uphill Journey

In Uphill both ways from Seth Godin's Blog , Seth Godin shares,

“Newton had it right… you’re going to need to go uphill in order to go downhill.”

It seems like everything I’ve accomplished and felt proud of has been an uphill battle.

Goals that I’ve wanted to achieve has been a struggle for me.

When it has been easy to achieve things, I don’t feel the sense of accomplishment and pride about them as I do the ones that I had to work for. Those seem more of a stroke of luck and happenstance than actually a product of hard work.

But while I’m working towards the goal, I feel I’m putting a lot of sweat equity into it whether it involves mental or physical labor. As I struggle to reach my goal, I feel stress and a sense of inadequacy but I push myself on. I refuse to give up because giving up would be a failure to me. Not achieving my goal but knowing I gave it my best would be tolerable even if I wasn’t happy with the result.

Once I have worked hard and put in lots of time and energy, I can enjoy the pleasure I feel for completing my task. This is my downhill. I ride this pleasure all the way down and feel joy in my heart.

It is this work ethic that I want to instill in my students. I want them to try and give their best effort when working towards their goals. They may face obstacles and feel like giving up but they need to dig deep into themselves and push themselves to finish.

I will be there to encourage them when they are feeling down. When I feel like their energy is flagging, I will be there to offer support. When they want to give up, I will be there to help them push on. They will not have to fight the uphill journey alone.

I want them to feel the pride of reaching their goals and knowing that their hard work paid off. I want them to be able to ride the downhill feeling joy and a sense of accomplishment and pride.

How do you help your students on the uphill journey? Please share.

Photo by Anthony Da Cruz on Unsplash

Help Students Become Successful

In 9 Ways to Help Your Students Show Up Well from @DavidGeurin Blog,  David Geurin gives some ideas to help students in school to show up well. I agree with his ideas and wanted to include how I do the same thing in my classroom. His ideas are in bold italics and my ideas are below each one.

Here are some ideas everyone can use to help students in your school show up well:
1. Greet students, learn names, give high fives and fist bumps. Say hello to each person you meet in the hallway.
I like to greet each student at the door and shake their hand. They like to be treated as an adult and they learn to be comfortable shaking hands with people they meet. This is a great job skill for them to learn.

2. Get to know your students as people. Ask them about their hobbies, their weekend, or just about anything. Eat lunch with them. 

I like to find out if anyone plays on an extracurricular team or if they play a musical instrument. Then I try to attend a game or recital so I can cheer them on. One boy participated in skateboard competitions and would have a video showing his performance. Sometimes I would show the class.

3. Always protect each student's dignity. Show great care and concern. Give respect even when it's not returned. 

Students need role models and may not always know how to show respect. I try to show them respect and if I feel disrespected, I will talk to them alone and discuss their behavior. I try to show them how it would feel if I treated them in the same way.  Many times I can reason with them as long as I’m consistent with treating all of my students with respect.

4. Notice how your students are feeling. Make it safe for them to express their feelings to you without judgment. Ask them if they are okay? Check on them. 

I have my students write in a journal the first five minutes of class. They can write about a specific topic or write about how they are feeling and why. After the first few weeks, many students share a lot of their life and what they are going through.

5. Smile. Joke around. Use humor to lighten another person's load. Laughter makes life better and even more bearable. 

Many times I can diffuse a behavior incident with humor if I don’t let it get too far. I have to make sure that my humor doesn’t ridicule or embarrass the student though.

6. Meet a need. Provide a snack or a jacket or a pencil. If you can't meet the need, find someone who can. 

I don’t let my students off the hook if they forget school supplies but I do let them know that they can borrow what they need (with collateral which usually is a school badge). If they forget too often, it is time to call home and discuss whether this is becoming a habit rather than an accident.

7. Encourage and praise. Use your words to inspire and lift up. See the spark of genius in each student. 

Many of my students are not used to encouragement and praise. I try to do this and encourage them to do the same with their peers. Sometimes this takes an intentional time for practice. I also like to call home and brag about them to their parents. Then the parents share my praise with my student which makes the student want to do better in class.

8. Have high expectations. You can do it. I believe in you. I've seen you overcome this before. You can do it again. 

-->

I explain to the students that they need to reach for the stars and not let anyone take their dreams away from them. I do not tolerate disrespect or laziness. Mistakes are okay as long as the students learn from them.

9. Listen with empathy and try to understand. Approach that hurtful comment, behavior, or action with curiosity to understand the child better.

I try to think about why a student is behaving a certain way. I try to find out if there is some situation that sets off this behavior and if there is any way I can change or improve the situation. It is important that I don’t take the student’s behavior as a personal attack against me.

How do you do these things in the classroom? Please share.