Dear Journal,
So today I put my shoulders back erect, picked my chin up a little higher, and put a no-nonsense sparkle into my smile. I put interrupters in their place and kept the class moving straight ahead through the review we did today.
They noticed. And they behaved like such beautiful well-trained little children! They took me seriously, they kept on task, they made effort and were just all-out adorable.
Aha! Got it. I remember this now!
Solved the problems I'd been having with some of them using Facebook, G+, games etc. during class.
I do a lot of walking around during the class, and when I noticed a student playing solitaire I made my way slowly over to him, leaned in close and waited with a kind but firm smile until I had both of his eyes locked into mine, then all I had to do was point at the screen and say, "That. Never happens in class." Then, widen the smile a little bit, think "I love you", give the shoulder a quick squeeze, and turn away.
Thank you, Fred Jones. It works!
............How do you DO that???!!! lol "A kind but firm smile." What does that look like? *face scrunches up in frustrated cluelessness* I wish I could just sorta absorb the whole teacher skill set by osmosis. =\ Sounds like you're doing a great job and learning a lot. :)
ReplyDeleteI know right!!??! I realize more every day how little I really know about this business of being a teacher... The blog makes it sound like I have it all put together but that's just because my supervisor is checking to see if I'm putting the techniques of body language that I'm learning into practice and I have to write about what's working and what isn't... Know that for every moment that works as well as that one did, I've had a hundred miserable tries that didn't work. :)
ReplyDeleteThe teaching skill set doesn't come by osmosis except to a few people who just get born with it, but the rest of us can learn it with practice.. (Thankfully!)
I'm going to post a section from one of my books that gives a pretty good shot at answering the question, "how do you do that?" just for anybody else that may be wondering the same question..