Skip to main content

Everyone Has a Story

Each of us has a Story!


This last week was the type of week that both energizes and saps energy, fortunately, they work together for balance.
The week marked the middle of our grade period...and our classes for this term.  On the way to school, I quietly panned my classroom in my mind and tried to imagine what I knew about each student.  The deeper I dug, the more I realized that what I knew about some students was surface-level knowledge.  This disturbed me, because it represented a break in the community, the very thing that we all need. 

Upon beginning my classes that day, I pointed out to my students that we had been working hard in class.  We had been learning a great deal about our subjects, which is why we are in school.  We are there for another reason, community, and to build community, we need to know each other.  We work alongside each other and build a team through that work, but how often do we stop to intentionally learn more about each other on a personal level?  So, we decided to challenge that assumption.

I started by telling something about myself that I felt the class did not know, and others in the class were invited to ask a question about it.  The response was wonderful.  Students wanted to know more about their teacher.  Then, I chose someone in the circle.  That person could share like I did or have me ask a question to prompt sharing.  To my surprise, these students wanted to share.  They dove more deeply than I expected and came out toward the end of the class period with a question.  "Mr. Pickerd, can we do this tomorrow in French?"  

It was clear to me that in as far as I desire to know about my students, they want to be known.  As we come to be known(and know others) we begin to recognize that our individual stories mix and mingle with those of others around us.  They become parts of a larger story.

Each of us has a story!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Maintaining the Road of Learning

I have spent my entire life living in Michigan, the Great Lakes State, the state of ever-changing   weather,  the state with two seasons (despite claims to the contrary); Winter and Road Repair... a state   loaded with metaphor potential. And in as far as this is all true, I would like to link a Michigan-related  metaphor to learning and an encouraging recent experience. One month ago, I welcomed a brand new group of foreign language students into my classroom. This group had been blessed by the energy of a very gifted and caring colleague of mine for the first three trimesters of their learning, and because of this, I knew that they had come to me well- prepared. So immediately, on the first day of class, we launched into learning...learning about each other, learning about our interests, our fears, our hopes, all of those first day activities. In a very short time; however, it became clear that this class was different from others that I had ...
Post a Comment
Read more

We each process differently. Speaking and listening in Teaching(or training, or training, or…)

We each process differently.  Speaking and listening in Teaching(or training, or training, or…) Over the years and decades of learning and teaching (and coaching and training…), I have been placed in so many different sets of circumstances in which I needed to stop, look, listen, and reflect about what I was doing. It always came at a time when what I was doing was either not working or not as well as I had hoped. Several weeks ago it happened again. During an evening class, I was pulling out all of the stops to teach a concept to a group of students. They too were putting themselves into the learning.  Yet, despite everyone’s effort, the connection I had hoped my class would make with the material fell short.   At the end of the evening, I asked the group to review and share with me what they had learned, and they did so quite well. Nonetheless, I sensed that their words masked the lack of depth of understanding. Their eyes, on the other hand, revea...
Post a Comment
Read more

Community in a Time of Struggle

Today I opened the first three volumes of my Great Books series from 1952 by Encyclopedia Britannica, mostly to find the word “community” in the syntopicon which makes up volumes two and three of the set. These two volumes contain over 100 major themes that frame up what is called “the great conversation”.  At first, I found myself disappointed at not finding the word community as an entry or essay topic in the syntopicon, but then I took a second look and recognized a new perspective on the matter. The specific topic of community was not granted an essay in and of itself because the entire series is about community. Every one of the topics who found their themes in the contents of these volumes, every one of the 54 volume set of books, is flooded from cover to cover with community. Whether the theme is angel or aristocracy, hypothesis or habit, liberty or law, wealth or wisdom; from Aeschylus to Freud, these volumes in their contents validate the imp...
Post a Comment
Read more