Ho‘ohana Aloha

Ricky has brought D5M (the Daily 5 Minutes) to her high school classroom in a wonderful way!

Most importantly, the listener is directed to practice listening with an empty mind.

My commentary is on Talking Story today: Comfort in Listening, achieved when “We press on.”

I know we’ve all done lots of people watching (one of my favorite things to do, actually) but have you ever done people listening? … But, of course, being an avid eavesdropper doesn’t always mean we are good listeners.

As an aside to this particular posting, I love Dar’s Monday intention. Click through more pages on her blog to read a few more topics; she is “an award winning children’s book author, illustrator and educator who is known for her books, her presentations on creativity at national educational conferences, and her programs and residencies with elementary schools throughout the country.”

Pretty sure I was in the 6th grade, maybe still the 5th, when I figured out why we go to school.

There is hope!

Right away, certain patterns emerged. First, great teachers tended to set big goals for their students. They were also perpetually looking for ways to improve their effectiveness. For example, when Farr called up teachers who were making remarkable gains and asked to visit their classrooms, he noticed he’d get a similar response from all of them: “They’d say, ‘You’re welcome to come, but I have to warn you—I am in the middle of just blowing up my classroom structure and changing my reading workshop because I think it’s not working as well as it could.’ When you hear that over and over, and you don’t hear that from other teachers, you start to form a hypothesis.” Great teachers, he concluded, constantly reevaluate what they are doing.

Superstar teachers had four other tendencies in common: they avidly recruited students and their families into the process; they maintained focus, ensuring that everything they did contributed to student learning; they planned exhaustively and purposefully—for the next day or the year ahead—by working backward from the desired outcome; and they worked relentlessly, refusing to surrender to the combined menaces of poverty, bureaucracy, and budgetary shortfalls.

But when Farr took his findings to teachers, they wanted more.

Teacher, thou art a Santa Elf of the highest calling. You know that, right?

Teaching is a profession that I believe to be a calling. This calling to teach is rooted in exceptionally strong beliefs about our human capacity and worthiness.

Learning feeds on this belief of possibility.

So…What do the truly great teachers of our world believe in?

1. Teachers must believe that people are innately good. Without this core belief and faith in their students and communities, great teaching and the learning it enables is not possible.
2. Teachers believe they do not work on their students, they work with them; they enable and empower their working on self. They believe this results in a mutual collaboration: They learn from their students as much as they will teach them.
3. Teachers believe that empowerment comes from within, and has more to do with self-motivation and innate talent than with an obedience to authority. They get their cues from the student, not from the curriculum, lesson plan or learning process.
4. Teachers believe that all students have strengths which can be made stronger, and that their weaknesses can be compensated for to become unimportant.
5. Teachers do not believe they train students as they teach, they believe they grow talents, train skills and offer additional knowledge.
6. Teachers believe they coach and mentor students, and they love doing so — not “like,” love.
7. Teachers believe that the students they teach are more than capable of creating a better future. They hold great faith and trust in the four-fold human capacities of physical ability, intellect, emotion, and spirit, no matter a students’ age.
8. Teachers believe in the power of positive, affirmative thinking, and they have a low tolerance for negativity. They are confident and eternal optimists, and they share their enthusiasm.
9. Teachers believe it is their job to remove barriers and obstacles so students can attain the level of greatness they are destined for. They believe that “can’t” is a temporary state of affairs, and that everything is only impossible until the first person does it. They believe that “I don’t know” is a beginning, and not an end.
10. Teachers believe that their legacy will be in the students they have helped to achieve worthwhile and meaningful goals. They believe that success is measured in people who thrive and prosper having learned to be good contributors to our society while in their care as students.