Cycle One

        During the readings this week I kept coming back to the same idea of "helicopter parents" and "hovering teachers."  As a student and as a child I remember having a lot of time to explore, individually and with my peers, to the point where I rarely remember having adults around except for explicit lessons or times when an adult was mandatory.  Most specifically I remember going to my older brothers’ baseball games and tournaments and I would immediately leave my parents to meet up with the other younger siblings from the teammates to wonder around the baseball complex.  We had to keep an eye on the game so we could come back when the game was over, but otherwise we were free to roam, get dirty and use our imagination.  I remember it being a special activity to have my parents play with me and my brothers but it was never expected.  Now I see my nephews and nieces playing with their parents more than learning to play with their own siblings.  They are learning to play with adults who stop them from making mistakes before they are even made.  I’m a strong believer in learning from mistakes so if students are not allowed the opportunity to make mistakes, how do we expect our children to learn? 

         Learning is a product of opportunities to expand and explore in one’s own time without fear of judgment or overwhelming confinement.  All classrooms and societies have a set of laws and rules for safety and consistency which provides an environment that allows for people to feel comfortable to learn, but these should be basic necessities.  Children have a sense of right and wrong, which is why teachers typically know a student is about to do something inappropriate because the student seeks out the teacher to check if they are looking.  I’m sure all the teachers know this action, when one of your students’ looks at you just before they do something probably should not.  They either do this to check they are not going to get caught or they are seeking attention. That was a question I had in the Japanese pre-school model for attention-seeking behaviors that are not appropriate for the classroom, how does the teacher help students develop socially so they do not act out or feel the need to act out?  I completely agree with not intervening for every misguided decision or disgruntled issue so students can develop together and create stronger relationships, but when the behavior is meant to grab attention will the behavior stop if it is ignored?  Should the behavior have a scaffold lesson facilitated by the teacher to help students understand how it is not the best idea to act out?

          As a teacher I find it overwhelming to try and know everything in my classroom but I like to know about my students.  I find that the more I talk to my students the less likely they are to act out and break our class rules because they want to build a stronger community.  So when I get emails, phone calls and visits from parents asking me to watch their students specifically or about a specific disagreement, like at lunch that two girls had three days ago, I get frustrated because it is not on my radar of importance.  The girls obviously worked it out on their own three days ago considering I did not hear about it but those parents need to know everything that is going on.  I respect my students’ decisions and I trust that they will come to me for help or will use the lessons they have learned previously in school, at home and from their own and other’s experience, they just need to have the opportunity to have those experiences.