A special teacher looking for the special children that aren't seen as such - Granite Grok

A special teacher looking for the special children that aren’t seen as such

School houseWe do a lot of bashing of teachers unions here at the ‘Grok and often, they bring it upon themselves.  I truly believe that their power ascendency has meant a lessening of actual teaching of our kids (along with a whole raft of other things, educational fads that should have never seen the light of day, and busybodies).  However, this post is for commenter Balencesto who keeps crying that all I do is bash teachers.  Some, to be true, but they deserve it.  But all of us have teachers that touched us and that we remember later on in life (1st grade Ms. Walsh, 5th grade Mrs. Johnson (math – what a hard nosed horrible teacher that demanded the most from me, and sophomore history teacher Mr. Dominishie who taught me “context”).  So when I ran across this at The Home Front, I had to share:

 Every Friday afternoon my son’s teacher asks her students to take out a piece of paper and write down the names of four children with whom they’d like to sit the following week… She also asks the students to nominate one student whom they believe has been an exceptional classroom citizen that week. All ballots are privately submitted to her.

And every single Friday afternoon, after the students go home, Chase’s teacher takes out those slips of paper, places them in front of her and studies them. She looks for patterns. Who is not getting requested by anyone else? Who doesn’t even know who to request? Who never gets noticed enough to be nominated? Who had a million friends last week and none this week?

You see, Chase’s teacher is not looking for a new seating chart or “exceptional citizens.” Chase’s teacher is looking for lonely children. She’s looking for children who are struggling to connect with other children. She’s identifying the little ones who are falling through the cracks of the class’s social life. She is discovering whose gifts are going unnoticed by their peers. And she’s pinning down- right away- who’s being bullied and who is doing the bullying.

As a teacher, parent, and lover of all children – I think that this is the most brilliant Love Ninja strategy I have ever encountered. It’s like taking an X-ray of a classroom to see beneath the surface of things and into the hearts of students. It is like mining for gold – the gold being those little ones who need a little help – who need adults to step in and TEACH them how to make friends, how to ask others to play, how to join a group, or how to share their gifts with others. And it’s a bully deterrent because every teacher knows that bullying usually happens outside of her eyeshot – and that often kids being bullied are too intimidated to share. But as she said – the truth comes out on those safe, private, little sheets of paper.

Data mining writ small – and with concern and love.  I would have loved to have had this teacher for my kids – because this would have been the least of what she was doing in her classroom.

>