New Teacher Diaries
Faith rewarded
Sep 20, 2007 5:36 PM
Three weeks before I started my second year of teaching, a friend theorized that faith was the acceptance of a new situation and knowing through personal experience that one would get through it. As I got ready to report back to school, this quite secular notion of faith came back to me with resonance.
I learned early in my first year of teaching the power of three. The first time I’d introduce something to my 1st/2nd-grade class a few students would understand, often leaving me feeling demoralized about the rest. The second time, maybe one-third of the students would start to understand. By the third time, most of the class would get it.
But, for any given concept, there were a few students for whom it took many more lessons and a great deal of creativity before they mastered it. One student in particular constantly baffled me.
Dequan was a petite and energetic child with a beautiful, flashing smile. Despite his positive and affectionate personality, he often frustrated me: calling out, wandering the room, limbs always moving. He distracted all of us. My management specialty is talking with students through their difficulty and devising a solution together. Dequan would stare blankly during these discussions. His only input: “I was bad.” “How could you do it differently next time?” I’d ask. “I could be good,” he’d reply.
More traditional discipline techniques — losing privileges, ignoring the behavior, positive rewards charts, seeing the school therapist, meeting with his mother — didn’t work either.
Though his academics became increasingly strong over the year, Dequan struggled with writing. He had trouble articulating ideas and typically would scrawl, letters missing the lines, essentially the same story repeated again and again for pages. Attempts to expand his writing topic and even to expand the phrases were resisted.
“What did the park look like?”
“A park.”
“What did you play on at the park?”
“I ran.”
“Could you add that detail?”
“OK” — but usually he wouldn’t.
I often felt extremely frustrated. “Go take a break,” I’d shout, sending him to sit separately from the group. On better days, I’d call the school therapist, principal or another teacher and ask, “If you can, please take him. I need a break!” But his huge smile, his tendency to throw himself into my arms after recess, and his increasing mastery of books and addition kept me going.
I brainstormed daily with other teachers and administrators to come up with new techniques to help him. My most consistent practice was to reward everything positive he did with excess enthusiasm and praise.
And then, suddenly, things began to change. He stayed in his seat during reading and read. He did the math activity instead of throwing the manipulatives at his partner. He responded to directions. His writing even expanded. At the beginning of June, he completed a book about bridges, the culmination of a nonfiction unit and study of New York City bridges.
Reading through his book with him, I had to blink back tears. Every page focused on one idea, offered something new, and stuck to the theme. The writing was even legible. Particularly telling, the book focused on bridge behavior, with instructional pages like, “People can walk on the bridge and people can’t run on the bridge and people can’t play on the bridge and you cannot do cartwheels on the bridge. No cartwheels.”
There were many strategies that contributed to Dequan’s ultimate success, but the most important lesson that I took from working with him is faith. Frustrated as I was with Dequan, his smiles and enthusiasm encouraged me to keep trying with renewed energy. Reading his bridge book was my proudest moment, proving how much students are learning even before their work shows it. That day I sent Dequan to the principal for the last time — to show off his book.
Progressiveteacher81 is the pseudonym for an elementary school teacher in Manhattan who is starting her second year of teaching. A version of this post first appeared on the UFT blog, edwize.org, where “New Teacher Diaries” is a regular feature.
