PostScript: Happy Mother's Day

The smile entry is incomplete – there is more to that story…

Many years (at least a couple of decades!) ago I was teaching first grade at a public school in Melbourne, Florida. I was in my third year of teaching – finally feeling like I was getting a handle on all of it. My mother came to visit and spend the day in the classroom. I was excited and eagerly anticipated sharing my 29 children and my work with my dearest friend and mentor. The day was unremarkable and ordinary, except for our special visitor. We read about Buffy and Mack in our basal readers and subtracted and read literature and played outside and read more literature and did some social studies and sang a song or two. (Aside – I got my bibliophile tendencies from my mother.) It was just another day in a string of days in our first grade classroom. Unremarkable in its ordinariness.

On the way home I asked my mother what she thought about our day in first grade. She shared her impressions of all those little bodies in that small space. She understood why I always talked about having bruises from bumping into tables. We talked about the personality bubbling up out of that enthusiastic group. She got to hear one of the children share his theory of why dinosaurs “got extinct. Because they didn’t take baths.” We dissected the read alouds and the childrens’ responses to the books. She expressed surprise that I sang in public.

Then my mother said, “But I thought you would smile more.”

I loved my work teaching those first graders. I was passionate about learning – theirs and my own. It was such a privilege to observe the burgeoning literacy of those six and seven year old children. It gave me great joy. But how would people know that?

Even more importantly, how would those 29 children know?

I would smile more.

Didn’t those children deserve that?

My mother has been gone a long time and I have not been an elementary school teacher for an even longer time.  But I smile more. I spend at least two days per week in elementary school classrooms in my work as a teacher educator. And I smile more. Often as I debrief with my teacher candidates I admonish them to smile more.  Every graduate class I teach I hear my mother’s voice and I smile more.  It is a way of life.

Thanks Mom!

More Than You Know

Children are like wet cement. Whatever falls on them makes an impression.    

Haim Ginott

For teacher educators this is the time of year when preservice student teachers are completing their independent teaching. Leading up to complete takeover there are degrees of readiness exhibited by student teachers. Regardless of how ready they think they are at the outset, all have one thing in common – it is overwhelming.

Makes sense – for many student teachers the lead up to complete take over in the classroom has been three months. That’s about twelve weeks of support before being left alone with all those responsibilities. Totally independent. In a room full of elementary-school-age children.  

Really?   

REALLY!

So how does one handle the responsibility?

What does one do to manage the stress?

How does one cope with the enormity of teaching?

Here is where Haim Ginontt’s advice serves us well. Children learn more from what they see and experience than from what we tell them. So what do we want all those children to see? What do we want them to experience? Simplest start –

Smile so the children see that you are happy to be there

Smile so the children experience your passion for learning

Smile so the children see that you enjoy what you are doing

Smile so the children experience the joy of learning

Smile so the children see that you like these children

What will happen when you smile at that room full of children? There is scientific evidence for the truism that smiles are greeted with smiles. Here is one example:

http://www.livescience.com/34339-facial-muscles-frown-smile.html

Everyone has anecdotal evidence to support this contention. Just smile at the next person you see and watch what happens.

It is easy to get caught up in all the responsibilities of independent teaching. IT is serious business. But it doesn’t require being business like. Try not to get so caught up in what you are doing that you forget to focus on how you are doing it. (You teach CHILDREN – remember?)

Smiling results from feelings of happiness but there is some evidence to suggest that the reverse is also true. Smiling actually makes you happier. See the article Smile! It Could Make You Happier in Scientific American for more:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/smile-it-could-make-you-happier/

So if things are not going exactly as planned and you are not feeling truly happy in that moment (or any moment!), remember to smile anyway. You’ll feel better and so will those children. What a great lesson for everyone.

Sage advice for veteran teachers too – - it works.  All those smiles falling on all those children will most certainly make an impression. More than you know…

Still learning…to teach, Dr. G.