-- Every high school teacher when asked if they'd ever consider teaching elementary.
"Are you kidding me? I could never do that. Those people are crazy."
-- Every elementary teacher when asked if they'd ever consider teaching high school.
In my first few years as teacher, I had a kindergarten teacher for a roommate. Many an evening we would commiserate over the trials and tribulations of our respective positions. She would tell me of her struggles with nose pickers and biters, and I would relay tales of angsty, full-of-attitude teenagers and the various layers of drama steeped in every hallway. Each of us marveled at the other's ability to tolerate the intolerable, and would swear to never step foot into one another's arenas.
Life makes it's own plans, of course, and while I have remained professionally a high schooler my whole career, I have since become a father to four children who in their turns are marching their ways through elementary and middle school. After an occasional class volunteering visit, and countless interactions with my kids and their seemingly endless hordes of neighborhood friends (some days I swear that my wife and I should be charging after-school care fees), I'm more convinced than ever that teaching primary school is not something I would be cut out for.
That said, I have had the good fortune to interact with elementary and middle school teachers a fair bit over these years. Besides my own children's teachers, the online community is well populated with elementary teachers and some of the emerging social media formats that teachers are gravitating to are finding primary teachers as their early adopters. Periscope and Blab are two broadcasting apps that are gaining mass appeal, and both of these platforms offer teachers some excellent opportunities to interact with colleagues around their jurisdictions, states and provinces, and the world as a whole. But for a variety of reasons, both of these platforms seem far more heavily populated with teachers in the younger grades. So I find myself "hanging out" with some fabulous educators, but very few of them are in my teaching stratum.
And while I'm on the subject of the live broadcasting teacher community, I also want to take a moment to put a plug in for the growing teacher families on each of those media streams. While the majority of teachers currently broadcasting live probably align fairly similarly with Pinterest's demographics (mostly female elementary teachers from the US), they are producing a lot of exciting, informative, and interesting content. On any given night, you can log in to see people like Sheila Jane from sheilajaneteaching.com spreading missions of happiness and harmony. Teachers Pay Teachers gurus not only hawk their wares, but share their secrets for growing businesses that help teachers justify hours of personal time spent developing content for their (and others') classrooms. Education advocates and cheerleaders for student success and engagement share powerful stories of traditional and progressive classrooms around the world. While these social media streams are in their infancy, I daresay that they might be the "Next Big Thing" in teacher professional networking.
But I digress...
Let me share some of the things we "bigs" can learn from the "littles" and vice versa, starting first with we high schoolers can offer the younger grades.
3 Things that "Littles" Teachers Can Learn From "Bigs" Teachers
1. Non-conformity
Most of these items I hope will be more on the positive side, but I'll start with one that is perhaps a little sour, so that we can end on a happy note. I will illustrate with a story:
One day I came home from work to what I thought was an empty house. After a couple minutes I realized that I could hear my aforementioned kindergarten-teaching roommate in the basement, which was unusual, because she was usually one to say hi when one of us came home. I went down to see her, and as I approached the threshold of "her house" (she lived in the suited basement of my house, but we were well enough friends that the whole house was welcome to each of us), I could hear sniffling and the stilted breath of someone who had obviously been crying.
I peeked slowly around the corner, and asked "hey... you OK?"
She sobbed softly. I sat beside her and gave her a hug, trying to figure out what this might be about. She was quite upset. Had someone passed away? Had her boyfriend dumped her? I waited for her to compose herself, and asked again what was troubling her.
"It's stupid," she replied sheepishly.
"It can't be THAT stupid if it's got you this upset. What's up?"
"Shirley" (a colleague) "told Christine" (another colleague) "that my bulletin board... and this is how she put it... 'looks like someone let the resource kids be in charge of it.'"
This brought on a renewal of tears, which was convenient for me because they caused her to miss the look of abject confusion on my face as I pondered how it could be possible that a second-hand critique of a teacher's bulletin boards by a colleague could warrant this much anxiety.
Apparently in elementary school, bulletin boards are a thing.
And I've since come to learn that just about everything else is too. While it certainly isn't a universal truth about every school and every staff, I've come to learn that Keeping-Up-With-the-Joneses can be a very big deal in the younger grades. That's not to say that it doesn't happen in upper levels, but we tend to have a much more difficult time (and thus perhaps a lesser tendency) of comparing one another across subject specialties. I, quite frankly, don't have nearly as focussed a picture of what an excellent English/Language Arts classroom looks like as, say, a Science classroom. Moreover, we expect that the Music teacher and the PE teacher will have very different personalities and skill sets, and while that might be a source for some good-natured (and sometimes not-so-good-natured) joking, diversity is sort of the norm in secondary school.
But in many elementary schools, there is apparently a "way" that everyone is more or less expected to be. Whether it's how loud a classroom is, what's up on its walls, how much tech is being used, how a class lines up at the end of recess, or the quality of a grade's Christmas pageant offering, just about everything is fair game for scrutiny and judgement.
This may sound fairly accusatory, but it really is not meant to be. I want to call it out because I desperately want teachers, no matter what their grade or subject level, to be helpful and supportive of one another. I want this for more reasons than I can count -- for the mental health and well-being of my colleagues, my kids, and my society as a whole. I want all teachers to feel like they have a chance to be themselves and to express themselves creatively through the contexts of their practices. When we create, when we are able to be expressive of ourselves as a person, we can be at our best.
So I'm going to offer this to the primary teachers out there. It's an outsider's advice, so I will take no offense if you tell me to stuff it:
Embrace your differences. If you like how you're doing things, and they're working for your kids, great! Keep doing it. Yes, there's such a thing as best practice, but the notion that best practice looks the same in every room is simply incorrect. Personalities factor in, and these differ from class to class, teacher to teacher. Your colleagues can certainly be a source of inspiration and ideas, but the people you have to answer to and live up to are the ones who sit in the small desks in your room, not the ones who sit in the big desks outside of it. Be your kids' hero, not your colleagues'.
If you do encounter differences in approach with a colleague who is producing results in their students learning (and please let's focus on that and not the window dressing that often gets critiqued instead) that is of lesser quality, then find the courage and compassion to support, nurture, and encourage that colleague with positivity and kindness. If you can't do that, then kindly keep your opinions to yourself.
2. What You Need to Give Them Before You Give Them to Us
A dear friend asked me advice one day on how to approach the subject of homework with his daughter's grade 2 teacher. Apparently his 7-year old was getting homework on almost a nightly basis, sometimes more than an hour's worth in a single evening. He felt this was extreme for a grade 2, and wanted some advice on how to broach the subject from someone "on the inside."
I couldn't provide much advice beyond advising him to address the issue with the teacher before sending it up the flagpole to admin. One thing I encouraged him to ask, however, was about the teacher's philosophical foundations regarding homework. "Ask her what she thinks the students gain by doing the work she is assigning at home, rather than at school," I advised. I encouraged this partially because it was a question for which I was myself curious to hear the answer. Later on, he shared with me her response:
"We need to develop good study habits so they're ready when they get to high school."
You're probably giving your head as vigorous a shake as I did when I heard this reply. Does a grade 2 teacher really feel compelled to prepare students for something that doesn't begin for another 7 or 8 years?? I am fully aware that this example is an exception among elementary teachers, and not the rule. My own children have all received very reasonable amounts of homework at their respective grade levels in my opinion.
That said, I have often come across the notion among teachers of all grades that students need to be habituated to certain norms in preparation for their future schooling, sometimes schooling that is particularly distant. We high schoolers are equally guilty, "preparing" many more students for college and university careers that a significant percentage of them are never going to have (not only because some won't attend college, but also because many won't take classes in our particular subject area).
So primary teachers, I'd like to pass along a request from one upper level counterpart, and perhaps my fellow high schoolers will extrapolate similar advice:
The only grade you need to get your students ready for is their next grade. That is all. If you teach grade 2, please only get them ready for grade 3. That's it. Please let us worry about getting the 9th grader ready for 10th grade and so on.
And to teachers of every grade: I appreciate that you are thinking of your student's future. I am too. But can I ask you to also think about his or her present? If your class is only concerned with tomorrow, how can you ask them to be engaged with their learning today? You might be able to match the importance of your work today with rewards you'll see down the road, but you have the benefit of a well-developed frontal lobe to help you make those connections. Kids do not. If you spend too much time preparing your students for my world, they're going to show up already hating it, and in that case any gains you've made in preparation will have been lost in their attitudes and motivation.
3. Math
I get it: Math isn't everyone's cup of tea. More than any other subject area, Math gets treated as the one plain donut in a box of iced and jelly-filled goodness. Certainly that's not true of every class and every teacher, and I know that there are plenty of innovative teachers who are doing amazing things at developing numeracy skills in young learners.
But I also know that it only takes one bad year in math for a kid to be completely turned off the subject, and, sadly, by the time they show up in their first high school math class, most kids have firmly made up their minds about the subject, and many have decided that they "just aren't any good at math" or that they "can't do math at all."
Part of this blame lays at the feet of math curriculum developers who adhere to antiquated notions about what K-12 students "need" in their math education. But it may also lay at the feet of teachers who have strong reservations and misgivings about the subject.
If imparting a sense of numeracy is not your forte, may I humbly suggest checking out Jo Boaler's video series on the subject. It's long, but absolutely fantastic, and as a non-native Math teacher, I found it to be game changing in my ability to convey math principles to students at their level.
6 Things that "Bigs" Teachers can Learn From "Littles" Teachers
First off, I want to say that it's no coincidence this list is longer. Some high schoolers can be pretty high & mighty about being "on top" of the K-12 totem pole (and I've definitely been guilty of this), but we should really get out of our own ways and pay attention to the good things that are happening at the younger grades. There's plenty that can be gleaned from their examples, and this is just a short list of things I've picked up directly from those wonderful primary teachers over the years:
1. Math (and Reading)
Didn't I just say that this was something the primary teachers need to learn from the high schoolers? Yes, but there are plenty of elementary teachers who could be of significant benefit to even the most scholarly of high school math teachers as well. And the same is true of literacy specialists in the younger grades and their English/Language Arts teaching counterparts up above.
We high schoolers come to the table with advanced subject specialties. The math teachers, for instance, understand complex algebra, geometry, calculus, and statistics. But do we all understand how to identify deficits in and impart very basic foundational skills in numeracy and literacy? Not often enough, frankly.
We teachers each have students in our classes who are struggling well below grade level in reading and math fluency. All too often, these students see no advancement in their grade level achievement throughout high school unless they have specialized interventions in place with resources that are in limited supply in most schools. We teachers have the ability to fill in those gaps if we come armed with an understanding of how. But that understanding is often treated cursorily, if at all, in the secondary math and English programs of teacher colleges.
2. How Carefully Considered Their Spaces Are
I marvel at many elementary classrooms. Every square inch is considered. The walls. The floors. Sometimes even the ceilings. It all has a purpose, it's all organized, and often the various corners of a room will have a very particular feel or nuance, perfectly adapted to the task intended to transpire there. I need to learn this.
Presently, I'm just terrible at setting an emotional tone through my decor. Growing up, I distinctly remember the "warm" classrooms I learned in and the "cold" ones. In the warm ones I was more engaged, more relaxed, more welcome, and I simply learned better. I realize the physical setup is not necessarily the only cause of those effects, but it's certainly one of them. Following elementary teachers on Pinterest and Instagram has inspired me to make my classroom a better looking space, though I suspect I'll be asking for a lot of advice and guidance from them in the process. That's okay too.
Presently, I'm just terrible at setting an emotional tone through my decor. Growing up, I distinctly remember the "warm" classrooms I learned in and the "cold" ones. In the warm ones I was more engaged, more relaxed, more welcome, and I simply learned better. I realize the physical setup is not necessarily the only cause of those effects, but it's certainly one of them. Following elementary teachers on Pinterest and Instagram has inspired me to make my classroom a better looking space, though I suspect I'll be asking for a lot of advice and guidance from them in the process. That's okay too.
3. Teaching the Whole Child
This one isn't entirely our faults. Most primary teachers start with a group of students and stay with them for a full year. Most secondary teachers see their years divided into semesters & terms and their days divided into courses and periods. Seeing 120 kids in a single day is by no means a rarity, and you might only see some of them for a couple of months in a year that is chopped into quarters.
Nevertheless, the most important thing we can do as educators is to connect with the kids in our rooms on a personal level. Yes it's harder when they come and go so much. Yes, it's hard when we feel the pressures of curricular goals and standardized testing looming over us. But we need to fight that off and get to know our students on a personal level.
I've seen a few teachers toss out a statement on social media that goes something like this: "I teach students, not subjects." It's getting to be a touch cliche, but I appreciate the sentiment. We need to connect with our kids as humans, and not as IPP codes, or social stereotypes (jocks, etc.), or numbers in a grade book. The moment we start stripping students of their humanity is the moment we license an administrator or a jurisdiction to strip us of ours.
4. Exhibition
Whether it's with flashy bulletin boards, newsletters home, class performances, or projects to take back to mom and dad, primary teachers do a much better job at exhibiting the work of their students. That's not to say we don't do this at all, but I think it's fair to say that we don't do it as much (at least not in the "core" subject areas -- my school's fine arts department would have some rather valid counterpoints to make here).
I can't say enough about the importance of having students perform, exhibit, and share the work they do in school with others. I have a whole other post coming that describes why the work has to matter more than the grade, so I won't get too carried away here, but exhibition is an important part of that concept.
Now you, dear high school teacher, might ask me "so you want me to hang the students' math worksheets on the walls?" Nope. No, I really don't. I want us to find work for them to do that is worthy of hanging on the walls, taking home, and/or spreading to the world at large. Again, that is the topic of a very different post.
5. Letting the Village Help Raise the Child
Volunteerism is alive and well in primary schools. Granted in many schools it's mostly parents doing the volunteering, but for some reason that spirit all but vanishes in many communities by the time the high school years roll around. I'll freely admit that the needs of a high school math class are substantially different than those of a kindergarten class (to say nothing of the average parent's potential to be of legitimate assistance in those two environments), but we still need to acknowledge that parent involvement in a lot of high schools is spartan at best. Some of the blame may rest with moms & dads who are happy to finally be reclaiming some of their own lives back after years of bake sales and concerts, but there are plenty of parents who still want be involved, some desperately. Does your school make it easy to find and make those connections? Do you?
Beyond parents there are community members eager to share their expertise with students. Doing a journalism unit in English? Are there any journalists who might be able to share some insights? Working on a projectile motion project in physics? Is there an engineer who might be able to offer advice on student designs? Making connections with the community and the world at large legitimizes the work we're asking our students to perform. Finding outlets for parents to get more involved in the school community enriches the culture of the building and potentially affords teachers the time to do the sorts of things that only we can really do.
6. Collaboration
Yes, I'm going to beat this dead horse some more. Every grade level needs to ratchet this practice up more, but the primary folks are leading the way here. Maybe they have a leg up because there is more uniformity in their practices than in ours, but whatever the reason, they're doing it better. We need to get off our islands, get out of our comfort zones, and start dismantling the walls between subject areas and grade levels, even if it's just once in a while and only a little bit at a time.
In the early years of my teacher practice, I was very uncomfortable with opening my door to outsiders. I didn't want them to see me for the fraud I often felt that I was as a teacher. Yes, I did my job, but I often felt as though I didn't know how to do it well, and whatever accolades I received were as a result of what amounted to me as "smoke and mirrors." I felt as though I was interspersing average teaching with little more than entertainment, and that I'd rather be seen as a good teacher than a bad one who was at least funny sometimes.
If you are like I was, suffering from what some call "Imposter Syndrome," you actually need to open your door more, not less. The best way to get better at what you do is to talk openly and honestly with others who do the same kind of work, regardless of how much better or worse they are than you. You need to see and be seen teaching, whether it's informally or formally.
*****
As teachers, as much as ever, we need to help build one another up and be supportive of each other. This is a challenging job, and everyone who has stepped in front of a class is a kindred spirit. Regardless of the age you teach, there is something to be learned and gained from interacting with other teachers. Sometimes you'll be the one receiving the most benefit from these exchanges, and sometimes another person will. But overall, our society and our world as a whole prospers when teachers get better at what they do and are more happy doing it. Every single one of us has the ability to help bring out the best in one another, and in so doing we'll all be better at bringing out the best in our kids.
So I challenge you, dear reader, to listen first, to reserve your judgement, and to lead with compassion and kindness.
♥
Vive la revolution!!
Tweet
In the early years of my teacher practice, I was very uncomfortable with opening my door to outsiders. I didn't want them to see me for the fraud I often felt that I was as a teacher. Yes, I did my job, but I often felt as though I didn't know how to do it well, and whatever accolades I received were as a result of what amounted to me as "smoke and mirrors." I felt as though I was interspersing average teaching with little more than entertainment, and that I'd rather be seen as a good teacher than a bad one who was at least funny sometimes.
If you are like I was, suffering from what some call "Imposter Syndrome," you actually need to open your door more, not less. The best way to get better at what you do is to talk openly and honestly with others who do the same kind of work, regardless of how much better or worse they are than you. You need to see and be seen teaching, whether it's informally or formally.
*****
As teachers, as much as ever, we need to help build one another up and be supportive of each other. This is a challenging job, and everyone who has stepped in front of a class is a kindred spirit. Regardless of the age you teach, there is something to be learned and gained from interacting with other teachers. Sometimes you'll be the one receiving the most benefit from these exchanges, and sometimes another person will. But overall, our society and our world as a whole prospers when teachers get better at what they do and are more happy doing it. Every single one of us has the ability to help bring out the best in one another, and in so doing we'll all be better at bringing out the best in our kids.
So I challenge you, dear reader, to listen first, to reserve your judgement, and to lead with compassion and kindness.
♥
Vive la revolution!!
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