Twenty years ago, I began my teaching journey as a newbie ready to change the world! Looking back, I can honestly say, I know I have changed the lives of my students, but the road has not always been easy. The journey has been riddled with twists and turns and full of ups and downs. In fact, the iconic image of Lombard Street in San Francisco comes to mind when I look back on my career in education. Between constantly changing curriculum, pedagogy, and testing policies, education never seemed to be linear.
There is one aspect, however, that has stayed as straight as a two lane highway on a rural road in Montana: teaching the whole child. No matter how many bends in the road education dealt me, teaching the whole child has been my true north.
In my heart of hearts, I have always known teaching manners, kindness, empathy, compassion, and igniting curiosity, are equally important as the curriculum I could ever teach the children. Sean Gaillard @smgaillard recently posted a tweet with a link to a post by Valerie Strauss @valeriestrauss. In The surprising thing Google learned about its employees — and what it means for today’s students, Valerie shares Google’s findings, which may surprise some people; the latest themes in education are important, but what really matters are the soft skills students learn. Showing kindness to a classmate and being able to listen to others transfer into becoming a collaborative colleague who values ideas different from their own. My fifth graders have a while before they will be in the workforce, but I am confident the culture we are building in our classroom, is shaping their future in a positive way.
A prime example where I put curriculum on the back burner for most of the day happened this past Thanksgiving. I taught the kids how to bake a ham, set a proper table, use manners while eating, and how to have conversation during a meal. We transformed our classroom into a Thanksgiving Feast straight out of a Norman Rockwell picture. Ok, not really because I bought everything at the Dollar Store, but the point is, students learned a set of skills which are invaluable to being stewards of humanity. In fact, over Christmas Break, a father sent me a picture of the ham his son made for their Christmas dinner. You guessed it, the ham looked identical to the one he learned how to bake in class.
The framework of teaching is often filled with numerous demands and testing pressures. Occasionally, we forget these are little humans in front of us! Daily, we have the opportunity to matter-of-factly teach kids or spark children’s inner ability to unearth their potential. Please don’t throw out curriculum; rather find ways to foster kids’ emotional intelligence while being learners. Omitting a step in the arithmetic would result in a gap in students’ math foundation, just like overlooking soft skills would leave a gap in educating the whole child. Keep your compass facing north; regardless of the direction of education, and remember the big picture - The skills you teach children build their foundation, and they are the architects of our future.
Architects of our future...powerful and significant words. Teachers tend to measure life in school years, and not decades! We need to look beyond the school year and realize as teachers, we are laying the foundation for our students to bring about a phenomenal world to come. Some students will arrive in your classroom with a strong support system ready to construct the tallest of buildings, and others will need greater reinforcement before they will be ready. Depending upon a child’s need, we have the responsibility to guide and encourage them along every phase of their development. In the end, I know this to be true; focus on the whole child, and they will design a future beyond our imagination.
Need some ideas?
- Have the lunch in the classroom and focus on a specific manner.
- Volunteer for Special Olympics and your students will demonstrate empathy and compassion in ways you would never have imagined.
- Ask your students to write sticky notes of encouragement for others and put them all over the school.
- Collaborate with a younger class to set up a mentor/buddy program. Whether it’s about reading, technology, or just playing on the playground, get kids connected with each other.
- Plan and cook a meal with your class.
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