Yesterday, my school had the opportunity to listen to Brian Mendler speak. It was refreshing, to have a professional development speaker that moved around, and didn’t rely on his powerpoint, and didn’t read to us; that engaged us and made us feel valued, and motivated us. Well, me at least.
Something that students appreciate from teachers is their honesty. Brian Mendler showed us that yesterday. He honestly told us about real situations, his real story. He honestly told us about how teachers are perceived from students, and we all laughed – because it was true! And you could tell the nerves he was hitting by the people how were uncomfortably laughing versus people who were out-rightly laughing. He talked about teachers that were rigid and policies set in stone, and people who got caught in power struggles. And then he talked about strategies to do instead of the rigid ones that we all learned from our own teachers.
He talked about empowering the students. Students rarely get a chance to have power, but they will try to get it whether you give it to them or not. They can either fight for it, or you can give it to them. And it doesn’t have to be an “I give up” form of teaching (which I’ve also seen in classrooms). It’s giving students power in a constructive way. Let them omit a question on the test and replace it with one that they really know the answer to. Let them ham it up in front of the class for 3 minutes to start the ball rolling (instead of them hamming it up during your lesson). Talk with them individually – it doesn’t have to be a conversation, you could be giving them positive (or negative) feedback in their ear for only them to hear. But, make sure you equally give positive feedback to cancel out the negative.
He talked about keeping the kids in the classroom as long as possible. Now there are some veteran teachers that cringe at this. But let me explain why it’s important. Students know that if they bug you enough, you’ll kick them out of their class. It’s not a punishment for them if you kick them out of math. And when they inevitably come back, you’ve got an even bigger problem than you started with. They have all the power and they got it the wrong way. And you let them have it that way. So how do you diffuse the situation? Humor. So they call you names. You can take it, you’re the adult, remember? What do you tell your kids to do in a fight situation? Walk away. Try it. Let them have the last word. They need it to save face to their friends, and they will have the last word if it’s the last thing they do in your class.
He talked about Multiple Intelligences learning, indirectly – using the gym for teaching graphing, singing songs to learn content in any area, working in groups to work on inter- and intrapersonal personalities.
We shared strategies with each other, and practiced some of the ones he discussed: 4-2-1, group work with roles (leader, writer, presenter, etc.), music stands, green-yellow-red cups, carpet squares – the list goes on forever.
It was refreshing to get back to an idea of teaching because we’re passionate about it, not just because we have to. I don’t want to be the kind of teacher that counts down the days, months, and even years to retirement. And I don’t want my kids to have those kinds of teachers either.