Throughout Teacher Appreciation Week, Edutopia highlighted four teachers’ stories from Teachers in Their Power.
Little moments
“It’s the little moments that happen every day:
When I see one of my students understanding a concept that I’ve been trying to teach them.
When I see them making a connection with another peer.
When I see them using the strategies I taught them about how to ask somebody to share or how to enter a play situation.
When they’re able to write their name independently for the first time and they feel excited and say, ‘Look, I wrote my T!’
It’s a combination of all those moments that reinforces for me every day why I chose this as my career.”
Read more: Margi Bhansali | The importance of play in learning
I wish people could see
“You see on the board where it says ‘28%, 28/100, and .28?’ Well, I have a kid in my class whose name is Joy. I taught her older brother, so I know her family a little more than her peers. So I asked, ‘Joy. Does your mom call you Joy at home?’ Kind of knowing what her response would be.
She said, ‘No. She calls me by my Nigerian name.’
I asked her if she wanted to share her Nigerian name and she said no. So I was like, ‘Okay, I have a Chinese name that I’m known by at home, and a Chinese nickname that I’m known by at home. And if you share yours, I’ll share mine. Okay?’
So she shares hers, and when she asks for mine I say, ‘I ain’t telling you!’ And we’re all cracking up. I tell her my three names. And say, ‘Here’s why I’m asking you this question. Because 28% is Joy. 28/100 is Chommy. And .28 is Chioma.’
And she was like, ‘They’re the same thing.’
I said, ‘Yeah, they’re the same thing, just expressed differently depending on the situation. Think about which name your mom uses when you’re in trouble and which one she uses when she’s happy with you.’
And she was like, ‘Oh my god!’ All the kids in the class were like, ‘Oh my god! We get it!’
It’s those kinds of moments that I wish people could see. When everything comes together. The kids and I are stretching ourselves, we’re building off each other, we laugh a little, and we end the day feeling a little more confident than we did when we started.
School can be amazing at every age when authentic relationships are built and adults earn the trust of the kids in the room.”
Read more: Raymond Lie | “I’ve never questioned staying in teaching”
Connecting to life outside school
“That’s one thing I greatly appreciated about Mr. West’s class: he made the work that we were doing relatable. It didn’t feel like we were learning material to pass a test. He was able to show us how valuable biology is to our lives. He let us see ourselves in the content that we were learning. He had conversations with us outside of biology — he got to know who we were as people. He became part of our stories.”
Read more: Terrence Smith | Teaching in partnership with the community
Dissecting books
“One of the standards for seventh-grade ELA is about the students learning different sections of books and articles.
So one day I borrowed supplies from the science teacher—everything a student would need to dissect something, I put goggles, aprons, pipettes, tweezers, and everything on the desks.
And then when the class arrived, I put my goggles on, and I said, ‘In today’s class, we are dissecting!’
They used their tweezers to flip open books and tell me about their structure. It was fun.
I went home that day and though, ‘Man, that was good.’ Just the look on their faces…”
Read more: Lauren Wesnak Smith | Personalized and extended learning
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