(This is a letter to our grandchildren. Each of our grandchildren will be in a public school this fall ranging from third grade to tenth grade. Our grandchildren know their Gramps is “old school.” Old as in living in his eighth decade and school as in being actively and constantly engaged in public education since 1970. And, they know that at the end of every school day, he will ask “Tell me what you learned today.”)
I wish for you a teacher who teaches you. Seems like a “No, duh!”, but it isn’t. The list of things a teacher is required to be in 2018 is long and teaching children is just one that can be lost in the many. I wish for you a teacher who expands your knowledge and challenges the ways you think about what you think you know. I wish for you a teacher who teaches you new skill sets and helps you to hone these skills so you will do things thereafter that you could not do before. I wish for you a teacher who builds your concept of personal challenges so that problems become opportunities and solutions become keys to opening possibilities and you begin to look for your next challenge with a smile. I wish for you a teacher who causes you to learn and to enjoy your learning.
Every teacher has a job description. Seldom do the descriptors say “Do this first – as in teach.” All descriptors are to be successfully enacted. That’s what a teacher is hired to do. Some teacher responsibilities are instructional: develop and submit lesson plans, assess learning, meet individual student learning needs. Teach class. Some responsibilities are managerial: keep an orderly classroom, maintain classroom supplies, submit required reports. Some are supervisory: assure student safety in the hallways and on the playgrounds. All are important to the teacher’s supervisor. However, only one is essential for Gramps: cause all children to learn the grade level or course curriculum. The rest of a teacher’s responsibilities will take care of themselves when children are actively learning from a proactive teacher.
Your learning is between you and your teacher. I hope your teacher will give you a smile frequently. Smiles are a good thing and help to connect children and teachers. But, I also hope she will give you a frown or a shake of the head when your learning or learning behavior is not on target. When teachers take causing children to learn as their personal duty they are invested in how well each child does every day. A smile rewards and a frown corrects. Your teacher should focus you on achieving the day’s lesson every day. Smiles! Teachers cause learning.
I hope your teacher talks with you every day. Teacher talk helps you to know how close you are to getting things right. Many times each day you will not be getting things right. If the day’s lesson is designed properly, the work should be challenging and you will make mistakes. Teacher talk helps you iron out the mistakes. Talking with your teacher also is your teacher listening to you talk about your learning. It is essential that you talk to your teacher. In listening to you talk, your teacher will know more about how you are learning and cause you to learn more.
I hope your teacher laughs a lot. Learning at school may seem like work to you and sometimes hard work, but learning also is fun. A teacher’s joy derives from student learning. The more students learn, even when learning is difficult, the more teachers should laugh. When your classmates are really working at their learning, someone will say something that is so perfectly correct that a teacher cannot help but laugh. Kids also say strange things, things that just don’t make sense at the moment and this also causes everyone to laugh. There is a difference between laughing with children and laughing at children; good teachers laugh with you. Imagine a classroom without teacher laughter and ask yourself if anyone, the teacher especially, is having fun. That’s not a classroom for you, Kiddo.
I hope for you a teacher who isn’t afraid. “Teachers shouldn’t be afraid,” you say. But, they are. Most are fearful of what children say to their parents at supper. You know how this goes. Mom asks, “What did you do at school today?” And, you say, “You should have seen (or heard) Mrs. Smith. She …” Teachers worry about what others think about their teaching and what parents are telling the principal. I hope your teacher is fearless and tries ways of teaching that push your limits. Teaching must always be child-safe, but it may sometimes cause you to say “Wow! That was crazy!” It is not strange that those “Wow!” things in class stick with you and begin to make sense later in time. I hope your teacher pushes all the good buttons that make you remember what happens in class every day.
Lastly, I hope your teacher will say more at the end of the school year than “Your grandchild was a good kid.” Of course, you are a good kid. Instead, I want your teacher to talk about how much you learned and how well you learned. I want her to say that you were serious about your learning and that you asked serious questions and lots of questions and sometimes questions that pushed her teaching. She should say that you were a respectful and earnest learner. And, in her own thinking, I want her to consider that you made her a better teacher.
These aren’t too much to hope for, my grandchildren. No, they are what every grandfather should expect.