Parents. Professional development. Pizza.
What do these three things have in common? They are just a few of the things that made this Wednesday feel so special for me!
Allow me to set the scene. A few weeks ago, the ELA-8 faculty received a mysterious email from a Tiger Pride representative telling us that we would need to make two or three hours of sub plans for our students on the Wednesday of Teacher Appreciation Week, because we would be attending a special presentation. That was it! No more details. What was going on?
On Wednesday morning, we congregated in the dining room and began speculating about the possibilities:
"Do you know what this is all about?"
"No, do you?"
"No, but I hope there's going to be food." (Okay, that last one was me.)
A few minutes later, the dining room doors swung open, and we were greeted by a deafening roar. All of the ELA-8 students had formed a spirit line for us to walk through, stretching all the way from the dining room to the library. I stepped out into the hallway and faced cheers, smiles and posters with words of love.
When Ethan, a special little buddy of mine from the Early Learning Academy, ran out from the line to hug me around the legs, I started to cry. I walked to the library and tried to smile and high-five all the students cheering for me, but it was too overwhelming to take it all in. I don't know if you know a lot of middle school students, but I do. Sometimes it seems like they don't have enthusiasm for
anything. But here were dozens of sixth- seventh- and eighth-graders screaming and jumping up and down, cheering for their
teachers!
My hallway experience in and of itself would have been enough to make my day--my week, even. But that was just the beginning.
When we reached the library, we were seated at tables that were strewn with candy, snacks and goodies. Kim Price, chairwoman of Teacher Appreciation Week, introduced our special presenter:
Tim Elmore, founder and president of the organization Growing Leaders. Dr. Elmore is a motivational speaker, author and blogger who travels the nation presenting about leadership, communication and "Habitudes."
Within two minutes, I knew that Dr. Elmore's presentation wasn't going to be your typical professional development seminar. He started out with jokes, until all of the members of the faculty were grinning, laughing out loud, and looking around at each other thinking, "This is going to be fun!"
The meat of Dr. Elmore's presentation was about understanding how each generation is unique, particularly focusing on the "iY Generation," which includes the students that we teach every day. Understanding the iY-ers is key to being effective leaders in our classrooms. We also reflected on how environment and experiences can shape children's attitudes and expectations. How important it was, I think, for all of us to stop and think about what drives our students, our parents and ourselves. We even stopped to talk about how the members of our faculty come from several different generations, and that affects the way that
we see the world--from jobs to technology to parenting.
My favorite part of Dr. Elmore's presentation was a board game metaphor that showed how leadership and teaching are like checkers and chess. In checkers, the pieces are indistinguishable. They look the same, and we treat them the same. In chess, however, there are several different pieces to know and understand. They have different purposes, and we make our moves based on what each piece can do. As effective leaders of our classrooms, we should be playing chess, not checkers. Our students are not all the same, and can't be treated as such. They are unique, and we cannot expect, and
should not expect, to move them in the same ways and see the same results.
This seems so obvious. And yet, as Dr. Elmore reminded us, a game of checkers is certainly less time consuming than a game of chess. And it's less complicated, too. Sometimes, when there's a lesson plan to "get through," and I have really specific ideas about what type of outcomes I expect to see from my students, and maybe there have been a couple classes lost due to special events or snow days, I might be tempted to play checkers. But Dr. Elmore's presentation was a wonderful reminder to me that my students deserve chess every day, no matter the circumstances.
After the presentation, we were all given a copy of Dr. Elmore's latest book,
Habitudes for Communicators, and we had an opportunity to meet him and have our books signed. And, yes, lunch from Great Harvest Bread Company was served!
This year's Teacher Appreciation Week was designed to feed our minds, bodies and spirits, and I, for one, am feeling delightfully full. Between gift cards, muffins, candy, notes, special gifts from students, and Wednesday's presentation, our parents have spoiled us.
I want Tiger Pride to know how grateful I personally am for the support that I feel from parents, not just during Teacher Appreciation Week, but every week. At Darlington, we have parents who truly love this school, as well as the faculty who work here. For whatever reason, February and March seem to be the time, every year, when we all start feeling a little glum, a little stressed, and a whole lot of ready-for-spring-break. Teacher Appreciation Week is such a generous reminder that we are important in the lives of our students and their families, and we're actually doing what we dreamed of doing when we signed up to become teachers: touching the lives of students.
So thank you, parents, for the professional and
personal development this past Wednesday! I needed it!
And in case you were wondering about the pizza... The third- , fourth- , and fifth-grade students made a pizza for each faculty member to take home for dinner on Wednesday! Best day ever.
Click here to see photos.
