Archive for: July 2008

“I’ve learned that people will forget what your said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you make them feel.”

Maya Angelou

As a child I remember sitting in my desk in my fourth grade classroom trying to make myself smaller.  My thinking was if I was smaller I would become invisible to the teacher and that meant she couldn’t single me out to go to the board to work out a math problem.  Going to the board was a public humiliation.  Her words, “it’s wrong” echoed in my childhood memory for a long time.   The feeling of being inferior, not capable and dumb stayed with me all through school.  Imagine how different I might have felt if my teacher had used the board as a place to make mistakes and ultimately discover the answer.

How you feel determines your success or failure, satisfaction or discontent, feeling competent or stupid.   Each one of us has a need to feel capable in what we do and to be loved and valued.  In the elaborate net of life the single underlying thread in our shared humanity is the potential for kindness in every encounter. 

Teachers can create a quality environment for their students, and the first element of quality is practicing kindness.   A quality teacher must ask: “is what I am about to do, stand a reasonable chance of strengthening this relationship.”

The elements of a quality teacher are:

1.     Who you are.  Your students are eager to know about you, let your self-shine though for them.

2.     What you stand for and why you stand for it, are of endless interest to your students.  Discussions big and small with people who they respect create ideas in the minds of students as they begin to form opinions. 

3.     What you will ask them to do.  Make sure your students know what you will ask them to do.  Never surprise them.

4.     What you won’t ask them to do.  Setting this expectation gives students freedom in their choices.

5.     What you will do for them.  As long as they make an effort to learn, you will help them in any way you can.  Discussions will be encouraged; disagreement will be laid on the table and explained or changed.

6.     What you will not do for them.  You will not do their work, or tell them what to do if you believe they can figure the answer out for themselves.  You will spend a lot of time teaching them how to evaluate their own work and to defend their evaluations. 

To be successful in life, we must evaluate ourselves and work to improve; we cannot and should not depend on others to do this for us.   Students treasure a quality teacher because a quality teacher makes them feel valued, competent and capable.  

Does artistic talent come naturally?  Are some students born with special innate talents or can talent be cultivated?

In Venezuela the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra believes talent can be cultivated.  This amazing system of education is called “El Sistema.”   This thirty-year-old program has made classical musicians out of a million and a half young Venezuelans, and transformed the lives of these underprivileged and at risk youths in the process.  Almost every major orchestra around the world has members who began in El Sistema. 

The concept for El Sistema looks at talent in a different way, it doesn’t take those from the gifted pool and gives them enrichment, enrichment is for everyone.  In this brilliantly conceived system music is literacy, it is a daily devotion that is filled with joy.   Exposure to music is not the low standard ad hoc program that most US schools currently have.  El Sistema takes everything students learn and rolls it all into one endeavor.  Music is rhythm, it’s motion, it’s coordination, it’s balance, it’s counting, it’s reading, it’s a social system and it’s a physics experiment.   The concept recognizes that talent exists in everyone, but it must be cultivated and nurtured to blossom.

If this simple philosophy were used as the standard in all schools imagine the possibility for achievement.  The children in the Venezuelan orchestra believe in their own ability to become great musicians, even given the improbable circumstances of their poverty.  If all students grew in the belief that they are capable to learn and master difficult concepts and skills schools would be challenged not with how to teach low achievers but with how to provide more enrichment.

This might sound like the ravings of some wild-eyed optimist but remember who the members of this orchestra are, they are children used to running bare-footed and dirty, they are children who come to school hungry.    Schools must increase their stock in optimists, in those who find joy in teaching and recognize children’s ability to greatness.

Anyone who has ever planted a garden knows the single most important ingredient is the soil, cultivating and enriching the soil gives many rewards.   A rich soil can withstand extremes of temperature and compensate for what’s lacking.   This same principle applies to everything.  Begin the journey in education early by enriching the mind.  Start with pre-school  give children music and art in abundance.  Continue this and  give children a chance to find joy and see their work not as boring drills and practices but a devotion to becoming better.