Somedays you wake up and right away God smacks you with a choice. Sometimes this choice is easy like "do I want cereal or eggs" sometimes, like wednesday, it's much harder. Wednesday is the day that I'm only at my placement for half a day. Wednesday is also the day where I often get up at 6, go to teach till 11, then I have class till 5:15, then I work till 9 and do homework till about 1. So this was the day I was I had ahead of me on Wednesday, and the night before I had been up until 2 doing a paper. So my choice was this when I woke up at 645, almost an hour late: get up and go for 4 classes or get some extra sleep. So I went, and this was one of those choices that made a huge difference. Out of all my classes in the day we have two that are loud, chatty, border line out of control. Which for me is ok because,as you all know, that was me in school. In fact that's me now so I like them. So the one class is mostly good, because they're our smallest class so we can control them. The other, however, is a little less controllable. So this was my last class on wednesday. Wednesday was a review day because we have a quiz on Thursday. So while the other classes did a fun group activity, this class did one silently, as punishment. Now pedagogically I don't agree with punishing with work, but it wasn't my choice so I went with it, and as I was walking around reading over their work, I saw a girl who was struggling. So I bent don't to help her and when I say "hey [meg] how you doing today." and as soon as I said that she dropped her pencil and started to cry. Now at this moment, I'm thinking "I should have stayed in bed." I hate crying. I hate when I cry, I hate when others cry, I just don't know what to do. So I fight the urge to run and I quietly say "what's wrong?" She shook her head and said "nothing I'm fine." again I want to run. But I again I stay. " come on, what's up" I say. So she spills. She tells me she's totally lost in the book were reading and she doesn't understand and it's not fair that she has to get punished with the rest of the class. So I assure her this paper was not going to be collected and when she stops crying I get her to show me what she doesn't understand and we spend 10 minutes going through the book.
So here's why I'm glad I got out of bed. One, I learned how to interact with a student who is struggling. It felt really good to get out of my comfort zone and into the trenches and really get to the heart of a student/teacher interaction. As a teacher I need to be willing to put my students needs ahead of my own. What she needed that day was not a silent review, nor did she need a minute alone in the hallway with a tissue. She needed me to understand that she was struggling with the material and she needed me to help her. One of my favorite professors and role models told me " a great teacher teaches the way he lives and lives the way he teaches," and I never knew how true it was until Wednesday. As a teacher we are pressured to live above the students. To talk down, keep our distance and control our classroom, but that not me as a person. When I chose to console meg and help her through her questions I was establishing myself as a teacher and justifying myself as a person.
I also saw growth when I chose to address the issue with the rest of the class. I didn't yell and I didn't punish. I sat on a desk and I told them how much I value their class and their willingness to interact with one another and how pumped I am that they love the book. "but,"I said. "it is extremely frustrating to me that I can't do everything I want to do with you because I am constantly having to stop and tell you that your talking too much. And it's completely unacceptable that your talking is getting in the way of you classmates understanding. I know you're capable of better and when I come back on Friday I don't expect to hear that this has continued." I kid you not that's what I said, and you could've heard a pin drop. I didn't yell I just talked to them, and though I can't say for sure, i think they connected.
So I don't expect this story to be earth shattering for anyone, for me it was huge. But what it all goes back to was a choice, a simple choice of getting out of bed or sleeping in. And I think so much of lives is decided by the choice of simply getting out of bed and embracing whatever comes out way.
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