If you’re dumb in this day and age, there is probably a good reason for it.
You have dyslexia, or dysgraphia, or dyscalculia. You have ADHD, or APD, or a Ph.D. You’re somewhere on some kind of spectrum, but you’re not sure if it’s the light spectrum, or the electromagnetic spectrum and likely, you’ll never know – because you’re dumb.
|
|
You’re an awesome person; I’d take you on my trivia team any day. But that doesn’t make you a Specialist. No. No it does not.
To be a Specialist, you only need to do one thing, but do it well – namely, take my class for 40 minutes so that I can have a coffee. You friend, are more than awesome, you’re special. And if the theme for trivia night is Music, PE, Art or Chinese, I’ll buy you a beer. |
|
|
Yep, they’re cute. No doubt about it. How can you not love working in a place that has little monkeys like this scampering about?
Preschool students attend school in the morning, usually dropped off at the door by parents who look like they haven’t slept in days, and depart at lunch time, just about the time you are heading down to the cafeteria for your third cup of coffee. Their parents wait for them at the door, looking much more rested and refreshed than they did 3 hours before. Every teacher walking by these “cutey-patuties” as they leave makes cooing sounds and other obscure noises to indicate an appreciation for their level of adorability, tussling their hair and giving them “high-fives” as they go. Often we fail to notice that the teacher of these early-childhood hoodlums is hunkered down in their classroom, breathing deep sighs of relief that they made it through another morning. |
|
Early childhood teachers are the unsung heroes of the education industry. These teachers give parents a brief respite to regain their composure before the cute kid that they attempt to manage comes back into their life to colour permanent marker on more of their favourite clothes.
Yes, Preschool students are the cutest little monkeys around, but if you want to give out a high five, give it to the teacher who restores parents' sanity, twice a day, everyday.
Yes, Preschool students are the cutest little monkeys around, but if you want to give out a high five, give it to the teacher who restores parents' sanity, twice a day, everyday.
You know Neil.
When you first attended teachers college back in ’72, your educational instructors told you everything there was to know about holistic learning, educating the whole child, linking teaching and learning, and learning and teaching. The only thing they failed to mention was how to actually teach a room full of kids.
Then came your placement, where you got your first taste of what it was to put theory into practice – and practice was anything but perfect. A student in your placement class ruined every lesson you meticulously planned and then discovered in five minutes every one of the insecurities that you had buried deep down inside of you after high school.
His name was Neil.
Since that time you have ground it out in this profession. You have experienced your good classes and your bad, and yet no day goes by where you don’t think about Neil.
No strategy you were taught, no theory you learned, ever made coping with Neil any easier. Your professors had no words of wisdom, nor did your placement teacher, and now, 40 years later, when you are the expert, you still have no advice to give to those teachers who may one day fill your shoes.
The only thing you can really say, is what all teachers will invariably come to know… “Every class has a Neil.”
Just be glad he’s not your boss.
When you first attended teachers college back in ’72, your educational instructors told you everything there was to know about holistic learning, educating the whole child, linking teaching and learning, and learning and teaching. The only thing they failed to mention was how to actually teach a room full of kids.
Then came your placement, where you got your first taste of what it was to put theory into practice – and practice was anything but perfect. A student in your placement class ruined every lesson you meticulously planned and then discovered in five minutes every one of the insecurities that you had buried deep down inside of you after high school.
His name was Neil.
Since that time you have ground it out in this profession. You have experienced your good classes and your bad, and yet no day goes by where you don’t think about Neil.
No strategy you were taught, no theory you learned, ever made coping with Neil any easier. Your professors had no words of wisdom, nor did your placement teacher, and now, 40 years later, when you are the expert, you still have no advice to give to those teachers who may one day fill your shoes.
The only thing you can really say, is what all teachers will invariably come to know… “Every class has a Neil.”
Just be glad he’s not your boss.
|
You remember that kid who answered “yellow,” when you asked him what 6 + 4 was. He is not the smart kid. If your student's parent tells you “she’s not a good test taker,” that’s not a good sign either.
Hands go up like roman candles in your class, but there is always one that shines brighter than the rest. And thank goodness. If you ever need to push a lesson forward, or just have that warm feeling of a student answering a question correctly, then just look to the glowing beacon of intelligence sitting fairly close to the front. Thank you smart kid, if the class was full of people like you, I’d be out of a job. |
|
|
Unless you work at a school in Japan where the kids clean the washrooms and the toilets are both self-cleaning and have law degrees, then you rely on the Janitor more than you could know.
Though they are often represented as lazy, shiftless, or Scottish, in the media, Janitors are, in actual fact… well… um… usually all of those things. That said, their lack of motivation, college degree or English proficiency should not be held against them. So, when that second grader you teach throws up on herself for the third time that day, and the man with the sawdust and prominent forehead makes his triumphant return – you should start to think of him in a whole new light. And when you finally realize that there is always extra TP on the roll the day after you go for Weekly Wednesday Sichuanese Hot Pot – you know who you need to thank. |
|
And when you hear that same man say, “Don’t worry, I got this,” as he takes a deep breath before entering the boys lavatory, armed only with a plunger, you better stand up and salute.
Go back to class and tell your students what a goddamn hero looks like.
Go back to class and tell your students what a goddamn hero looks like.
