My New Title

While on Christmas break, I got hooked on many marathon viewings of Locked Up on MSNBC. It's an excellent show that documents prison life. One night they were profiling a juvenile detention center called Lake County Juvenile Complex in Indiana.

There was one story that focused on an inmate/teenager/student who was back in court after being arrested on drug possession charges. It was his second time in the center for various illegal activities. This time though, he was making progress with his life; he removed his gang tattoos, went back to school and was passing to become an electrician, making tremendous progress in his weekly therapy sessions for anger management, and also had a second child on the way and promised to be a better father.

During the court session, the prosecutor kept bringing up the negative issues associated with this inmate/teenager/student, while the defendant was pleading his case in all the positive contributions he has been making. The court ruled that he was making progress with his life and he needs that to continue and therefore didn't need to have a longer stay at the detention center. After the ruling, the inmate/teenager/student erupted in tears of joy.

I like to think of myself as not only a teacher, but a tutor, counselor, advocate, parent and friend. Now I can add defendant to that list. Without the defendant pleading for this inmate/teenager/student, there is no way he would be free. I think some teachers are always pointing out the negative such as not showing up to class, not doing homework, etc. We need more defendants pointing out the positives in our students' lives. It's the only way some of them have a chance to succeed.

I run a school-wide positive behavior support plan and you'd be surprised the amount of teacher reluctance in participating in the program. There are many ways to support your students. A simple "Hello" and "How was your weekend?", if said sincerely, can welcome a student in your class and be that positive support they desire. Let's all be defendants and promote our students to be the best possible citizens they can be. We don't want to see them on the next episode of "Locked Up".
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Here is Rodrick: the student mentioned in this post

Merry Christmas! Or is it?

It's hard not to get in the holiday spirit; the presents, lights, family, food and of course the break from school.  Or is it hard to get in the holiday spirit?  Today I saw that first hand. 

I had a student in a grumpy mood.  Everyone is smiling and cheerful that today is the last day of school because of Christmas break.  My student wasn't.  After giving him some time to be with himself and get some sort of control with his emotions, I was able to talk to him to see what's up.  He told me, "everyone is in a good mood, but some of us have family problems." I find out that today is the second anniversary of his brother committing suicide.  Whoa!  How do I handle this?

This student isn't stable to begin with, but all he wanted to do was talk.  I didn't have the best information for him, but I was able to listen.  Sometimes that's all our students want.  They need someone to trust.  Someone they can talk to.  Someone they can confide in.  After our little chat, he wished me a Merry Christmas. 

Teaching isn't always about the x's and o's.  It's about building relationships.  In my opinion, that's the most important aspect of school.  Learning will occur, both easily and naturally, when that relationship is made.

It's so easy a caveman can do it

It's so easy to blog. It's easy to set up a PLN. Its easy to tweet. Its easy to set up your own website. Its easy to do this. It's easy to do that. As a special education teacher, the one thing I learned getting my masters degree was to never tell a student something is easy to do.

Think about it. It makes sense. If you tell a student something is easy to do, they will already have this notion as a failure if its not easy for them, plus the anxiety of the added pressure to learn something "easy". That's the last thing we want to do to our students.

This is never more true as I'm learning the ropes of blogging and tweeting. I've been lurking around the social sites for a couple of months now and have been very over-whelmed with the abundant amount of information. As i thought of my first blog topic, i found it fitting to post about the "easy-ness" of it all. It's not, especially since I'm somewhat of a quiet person. Once I get my feet wet and become comfortable, I come out of my shell.

This is exactly what its like for our students. It is easy to find x in x+3=6. Its tough at first, but after time and practice, it does become easy. I promise.

See? It is easy to blog