Effective Teaching

 

Ahh…effective teaching in action. That is one reason why I want to teach.  It’s always a pleasure to think back to the teachers and other people that influenced me throughout my education.  They were the ones that showed interest in students, had time to listen and acted like they were human!  They showed mercy and gave grace.

To show someone that you believe in them and are willing to support them gives the strength and power that we sometimes need to get through the moment, day or week.  When we as humans feel that someone is there for us we will do better in our actions.

Here’s an incident that stands out in my mind.  It happened about four and a half years ago.  My son was in grade one and struggling, he was stressed.  Every day I would go and pick him up and hear something negative about his behaviour. Some of these were that he had a meltdown in gym or was upset when trying to get into his locker when everyone else was in the hall.  During structured class times he was great, reading at a higher level, very helpful with the other children that were behind on their work, and he quickly made friends with an autistic boy, my son could calm him down. 

I wasn’t hearing these positive comments, no suggestions were given, and no solutions were being given.  I wasn’t there during the day so how could I control what was happening!  One morning when I was dropping him off, I was in the school getting him ready and the teacher had one more comment about his behaviour.  I was already emotional about the situation.  I feel that there is no worse feeling then not being able to properly support your child, there I was at 8:30 in the morning in tears standing in his classroom……I didn’t know how to support my son.  I didn’t have a solution to fix and protect him. 

Well, having a parent crying in your classroom gets you quickly escorted to the school counsellor.  Within minutes I was meeting with the school counsellor.  The first thing she said was, “Let’s get a cup of coffee and discuss how we can support your family.”  What!? I was so taken back by her choice of words.  She believed in me and my family!  She knew how to put someone at ease and not enter the situation guarded.  I was expecting to get a whole list of what my son or/and I could do better or a list of what we had been doing wrong.  Instead we worked together to create an environment that everyone could be successful in.  
 
 I believe that how she supported us has lead my family to be successful in looking at different challenges in life and seeing situations as something we can overcome instead of negative problems that can’t be solved.  I frequently think back to this life lesson when situations arise in the classrooms that I work in.  I believe that this lesson will help me to be successful when I am a teacher.