A Mother's Day Message to Teachers

One day last week I got a text message from my teacher friend, Deana* :

Hope your day turned out better than mine.

My teacher senses tingling, I concluded that something had gone horribly wrong for her and wrote back:

Awe! What happened?

As it turns out, she wrote a student up for telling her to lick his... well, you can imagine. He received 3 days of detention until his parents came tromping down to the school insisting that he had done nothing wrong and that all 17 year old boys talk like that to their teachers. They also asserted that if they kept having "so much trouble with these Ag teachers" there just wouldn't be an Ag program anymore. They stomped their little feet away with the famous last words: You haven't heard the last of us! Mwahahahaha! (Ok, I added the evil laugh, but the rest was true!)

Deana ended her story with these words that shook me to the core:

Not sure I want to do this anymore...

Shocked and a little angry myself, I tried to encourage her as best as I could but it was hard. There are always going to be kids like that and parents like that. There will always be times when you feel like quitting. So what keeps us steadfast when it seems that everything is pushing us away?

My answer came a few days later when Deana sent an email:

Today I got a Mother's Day Card.

The Front of the Card says: Mother's day is for every woman who's ever made a difference in the life of a child.


The inside says: Mother's day is for incredible women like you.

Then one of the students wrote...

Although you're not our mother, you're still an amazing person and teacher and we all look up to you! It's nice to know we have someone so close everday that we can count on for simple advice or just someone to listen. You've made a difference in all our lives and we couldn't have asked for a better person to spend our mornings with. We love you!

Some friends and I went to see "The Backup Plan" last week. In the movie, one of the characters describes parenthood. "Awful, awful, awful, awful, AWFUL... and then something amazing happens."

Thinking about it now, teaching is probably a lot like that, too. There's a lot of awful out there. But what keeps us there is that moment of amazing that reassures us that we're in the right place. It's those moments of amazing that really make a difference in the lives of the children we teach. It's those amazing somethings we have to remember when we just want to quit. It's the heartfelt gratitude, the moment when they understand, the moment when they make discoveries all on there own that keep teachers teaching in spite of the occasional awful. And lucky for us, awful can always be overshadowed by amazing.

Thinking Beyond the Bubble Sheet

Perhaps unfortunately for students, schools today often heavily rely on standardized tests. You know... bubble sheets, #2 pencils only, all that jazz. On most of these tests, students are asked basic comprehension questions requiring them to utilize only lower level thinking skills to answer. So how can we spice it up and encourage our students to use a few more brain cells? I say we give them the answers.

Give your students the test with the answers already marked on the test. They may be the correct answers, they may not be; that's up to you. Then to test your students skills simply ask them to grade the test. Tell if the answer is correct or not and JUSTIFY the decision. If the answer circled is correct, explain WHY it's correct. And if it's not, tell WHY it's not and explain what might be a better answer. It may be a little harder to grade but it will definitely get your students thinking beyond the bubble sheet. After all, though it's hard to believe sometimes, that is what we teachers are here for.