Collecting the Piece and Fitting Them Together
I hurried home from my second-grade class. I had news.
“Mother, we have a new boy in our classroom. He came this morning.”
“Is he nice?” Do you like him?” replied my mother.
I was quick to respond. “No, he thinks he is cute. He doesn’t seem to know anything. He will not fit into our class. I wish that he had not come to our school.”
“Why are you against him already? I want you to look for the good in people. It is always there. Look for it, and you will find it.”
That was many years ago. Her words shaped the trajectory of my life. I began looking for the good in people. It was always there. Unlike Diogenes, I did not need a lamp in the daytime for my search. It was easy to see that I was surrounded by likable, accomplished people. I was impressed by the competences and virtues of classmates, teachers, friends, and neighbors. Just as I had already learned to love nature and stand in awe of its majesty and magnificence, I came to love mankind. Over the years, I developed a profound regard for humanity. My deep respect for others makes my life an honor and a privilege. All of those many years ago, I did not know that habit of looking for the good in others was a highly appropriate preparation for becoming an elementary school teacher. Nowhere is profound regard of every human being more telling than in the classroom peopled by little children.
As a fledgling fifth grade teacher, I had a particularly recalcitrant student, whom I was trying hard to love and admire. My efforts were extensive, but ineffective. So, when our expert for in-service training for classroom management came, I had a question for him.
“How does one show the proper respect for a student whose behavior is the antithesis of everything you expect from your students?”
“I cannot answer that question. If I knew how to do that, I would not be sitting here working for this little classroom in-service. Instead, I would be out on the international lecture circuit telling educators how to work miracles.” This reply left me to figure it out for myself.
Then I realized it was up to me. My success in the classroom depended upon my ability to learn how to work those minor miracles. What an insight! I returned to my mother’s aphorism. Look for good in people. So, I knew that this was more than a maxim for daily life, it was a necessity in the classroom. If a classroom teacher wanted to be worth her salt, she would intensify her search for the good in her students. This search would undergird her determination to respect each student’s capacity to learn.
The classroom is the home for the mind. It is the respect for each student’s capacity to learn and achieve that makes it so. It is the duty of the teacher to create a place where the growth of the intellect is inevitable. One can only learn what he has the opportunity to learn. The teacher knows this and busies herself creating opportunities for her students to think. This thinking is what one does when he does not know what to do. The by-product of this thinking is learning. Well-designed methodology builds thinking skills.
Thus, the art of learning is built on the scientific method. The skillful classroom teacher will not only employ the method of intelligence to her own pedagogy, but she will also teach her students to apply it to learning and to life itself. Young children should be taught to live in an evidence-based world. This is the beginning of wisdom. Basic education is very important and should always emphasize thinking for oneself. The application of the scientific method assures this.
Honoring the life of the mind by enriching the curriculum with the tools of science is a necessity. Thus, for good and effective instruction, I always made use of the students’ need to know which has always given impetus to science. Then we teach and practice problem solving, formulating hypotheses, experimentation, keen observation, recording data, careful thinking and drawing conclusions. Children can learn to become rigorous thinkers at an early age. From the time they learn how to respect the remarkable brains that God has given them, any small bit of mastery over the method of intelligence is empowering. There is no way to make the classroom the home for the mind without teaching and practicing the use of the tools of science.
It was near the beginning of my career as a classroom teacher. For about five years, I had taught reading to fifth and sixth grade students. I prided myself on my diligence when it came to marking their reading notebooks. Every mistake was corrected with red pencil. Painstakingly, I would rewrite every poorly constructed sentence. Constantly, I showed the students how they could do better. Then gave them a grade on a carefully calibrated grading scale. Not living up to one of my own favorite dictums of applying careful thinking to this grading task long and onerous as it was, I considered this a set practice. Why was I so willing to follow this tried and true methodology? Why hadn’t I looked for something new and better?
It was in Dr. Charlotte Huck’s graduate school class that she made this suggestion. “Do not mark up your students attempts at writing with red pencils. Use a blue ink pen instead. Do not tell the students what they have done wrong. Instead, compliment them on what they have done right. Do not emphasize errors. Respond to the content of their remarks. Converse with them about their thinking.” I thought to myself that will never work. However, in the spirit of using the method of intelligence in my classroom, I decided to try what I dubbed My Positive Pen Project.
When I returned to my class in the fall, I could hardly wait to collect reading notebooks, so that I could grade them differently. I labored over squelching my red pen tendencies and supplanting them with my positive pen remarks. It was not easy to force myself to couch everything in upbeat terms. Somehow, I managed. At the beginning of the next reading period, I handed the reading notebooks back. This experiment was no longer on my mind. I was about to ease into our daily reading routine when I looked up because of the buzz in the room. The students were reading and comparing my comments. “Mom, what did she say?” They were actually excited. Marked reading notebook became popular. My students worked harder in reading than they ever had. Test scores soared. And best of all the tasks of marking notebooks was no longer onerous for me. I actually enjoyed it. I looked forward to hearing what my students had to say. We had mutually beneficial exchange of ideas going. Parents began writing their comments in the books. Sometimes they addressed their students. At other times, they wrote to me. They sent me books and essays to read because of something that I had written lead them to believe that I would enjoy said literature.
One parent traipsed into to tell me that her sons, a set of twins, had never been complimented on the expression of their written thoughts before in their entire school career “I just want to thank you for saying something good about their academic efforts. This is the first time that any teacher had ever done so.” As it says in The King and I, “by my students I was being taught.”
After several years in the classroom, I was actually learning how to grade papers effectively. What had taken me so long? Why hadn’t I realized sooner that I could apply my own rigorous thinking to finding the good in the written words of children? I had a whole new art to perfect. Teaching is the gift that keeps on giving. There is always more to learn. There is always more good to find in the students. For the home of the mind, the teacher is the designer of appropriate sets of intellectual tasks that nourish young minds. Each child will work on the activities and find his own intellectual niche in which he will grow and prosper. The learner will make discoveries for and about himself, his classmates and whatever his lessons are. He will discover his own learning rhythm, find his own propensities, learn to hone his own knowledge acquisition skills, and his heart will sing as he moves along. When he is learning, he is in his own element. To teach is to pay homage to the ineffable capacities of the human mind. It is to tap into what is already there, nourish it and watch it grow.
It is a glorious task. What is taught in the classroom today and how it is taught will manifest itself with all of its ramifications on the world stage tomorrow. The teacher, closeted in her learning center with her charges, is literally creating tomorrow. It is the teacher’s burden and privilege to move mankind forward and to alter human nature itself for the better. For is it not the purpose of education to march down the centuries brandishing the curriculum which will make mankind better?
