Teaching Thought #6
Try (let me emphasize that word TRY) to see students for who
they are in total, not for who they are at any specific moment in your class.
Every student – just like every adult – has two different
people inside of them. I swear many of
my students have a 45-year-old inside them as well as a four year old.
Case in point. Right
now it’s 8:36, and I’m somewhere in Montana on a charter bus. We are coming home from the choir trip to San
Fran. On this trip, I saw a student act
like a 45 year old.
On our first stop on our way home, several
students and I made our way over to Jack in the Box for a quick lunch. There were 8 of us at a table, when Abby, a
sophomore now, noticed that at the table across from us a senior was sitting by
herself. Without any prompting at all,
Abby asked the student if she was sitting by herself. The student nodded, and Abby immediately got
up, left our table, sat at the senior’s table, and began visiting with her
while she ate so she wouldn’t have to eat alone.
Abby was acting like a 45-year-old
adult.
Again, as leaders, we have to be ready for this, and we
have to let our students know that when they act like 45 year olds, they get
treated like a 45-year-old. And that was
one reason Abby was given more responsibility and freedom and trust on this
trip than many others.
Just make it clear to your students: if you act like the
four-year-old instead of an adult, you get limits and lectures; if you act like a grown adult, you
get more freedom and praise.
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