My son went on a camp once with a Christian youth group and came back with a t-shirt screen printed with “Hope is Free”. It has stuck in my mind. I wasn’t really keen on him going on that camp, but the t-shirt made it all ok. He was young and I didn’t want him to get ‘cult – ed’ at a tender age! I had nothing to worry about it turns out.
I really like that saying, and at times lately, it is becoming a mantra. If you need it, take it on.
We all want to be interesting, don’t we? When it comes to interacting with others, you can have more success in your communications if you are genuinely interested, rather than trying to be interesting.
I watched a film on Saturday night that my daughter recommended to me. “Freedom Writers” was about a young, idealistic teacher who went into a pretty scary school and worked at making it a place of learning for her class. Unfortunately I didn’t get to see the end of the movie cause my DVD player wouldn’t play the second half, yet what I saw was that her genuine interest in them, won them over, and allowed them to be able to listen to her.
It echoes Stephen Covey’s fifth habit, “Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood” in “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”. I see a lot of teachers put hours into planning fantastic lessons with students, but until they have built rapport with their class, the most interesting lessons will be hijacked by resentful and uncooperative students. When you show genuine interest in students and come to know them as people, you can take them anywhere, teach them anything. Why didn’t anyone tell me that when I was a student-teacher?
When I have focused on trying to be interesting to students I find myself feeling like a one man show. Who can compete with all the amusements available to young people today? If you ask them, they will tell you all kinds of useful things to assist in their learning.
Ironically, I also saw in that movie, her passion for her work, became a priority and she stopped being interested in her partner. So the reverse became true at home. He became resentful and their relationship began to sour. I didn’t get to see what happened, but I hope it worked out.
Today in one of my classes a relief teacher had just taught them and I noticed there was a mind map on the whiteboard. It was a subject that class usually complains about and I don’t think they really enjoy. I asked them about it and they were positive and enthusiastic about the lesson they’d had. One student said, “He asked us about what we thought, he didn’t tell us what to think, it was great, I learnt heaps”. I know it’s not always practical for teachers to focus on what students think, but if you do it often enough, you can give them something to think about.
It is a mark of respect to listen to another. Before the holidays I read the article about respect and I have been thinking a lot about it. It really resonated with me, yet I have been wondering, who teaches that kind of stuff to teachers. I am mentoring a first year teacher this year, so I am interested in finding ways to share this kind of information. Student management becomes much easier when you have genuine working relationships.
After my Nana went in 1999, my pa remarried at 80. He had such a positive loving relationship with Nana, I don’t think he would have known how to live alone. The year he was alone was terribly sad. It was great to see him setting off on adventures again with a companion to care for him. He was a big traveller.
Today I have been thinking how lucky I have been to have a grandfather, that I enjoyed being with, until I was 41. I lost my Nana when I was 34. They were both really important loving forces in my life. I lived with them (and my parents and Auntie) for the first 5 years of my life. Pa used to say to my boyfriends, “She’s a wonderful girl, bit spoilt though!”. He should know, they were the one who couldn’t let me cry as a baby so my parents tell me and endless other kindnesses in the years to follow.
When my daughter was two months old, my husband and I moved in with Nana and Pa for some months whilst we looked for a house. Nana had just had a hip replacement operation, so I cooked for Pa and helped out whilst she was on the mend. It was a beautiful time of my adulthood and I cried when we moved. Everyone was astonished thinking I’d be delighted to be buying my first home, but I didn’t want to leave their warm and loving home.
My children were old enough to know both of them and loved them as I did. I think we were incredibly lucky.
They were really there for me for such a long time. I remember as a child asking my Nana to promise me she would never die. She never would make that promise. She reassured me telling me I would be fine when it happened, I would be ready. I wasn’t, but I can’t complain how long they stayed nor the quality of their presence in my life.