Sometimes a child seems to take pride and pleasure in being different from other children. This attitude (the old meaning of “attitude”) can be exactly what it seems to be; it can be the child’s style of self-esteem. Since everyone is different, it’s good to accept and celebrate the differences. So a child can be…
I do hope you get a chance to walk in the woods with your child. My children aren’t children any more, but we still spend time in the woods when they come to visit me. Maybe some time I’ll have grandchildren. Until then, I take other children on the bike trail. Last week, the touch-me-nots…
Yelling at children is basically ineffective and counterproductive. It may feel effective, because it may yield immediate results, and it may temporarily let off some steam. There are even times when it’s necessary – when a child is about to run out in front of a moving car. But the long-range effect of consistently yelling…
In several of these articles, I’ve mentioned the importance of modelling for children. I’ve talked about modelling ethical living, apologizing, and a few other concepts, I think. As we think of teaching in terms of instruction – actively and conspicuously doing things to cause children to learn, it’s easy to forget the importance of modelling….
Sometimes now, I tutor children. Good teachers in a good school do a good job, but sometimes parents want to make sure that their children get a little more instruction than they get in school. Or they worry that vacations will undo the good the school has done. So a child comes to me to…
There are countless hours spent in courtrooms and dollars paid to lawyers because we want things to be fair. Someone else has done something that shouldn’t have been done or gotten something that we should have gotten, and we want justice. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just go up to some taller person…
It’s no coincidence that I’m writing about teacher burn-out right after I wrote about combined classrooms. I’ve had years when defending the combined classroom was more trouble than it seemed worth. But looking back over my teaching career, I think I suffered from burn-out less than the average veteran teacher. In fact, the stress of…
No matter what your job is, it’s probably not the only thing you think about when you do it. Depending on the job, the other things you think about affect your performance to varying degrees. If your life is in order, and everything is going well (but not so well that you can’t think about…
I think I’m wonderful, and have thought so pretty consistently for the past five years. Before that, I thought so many times, but not as consistently. Many friends, family members, teachers, and one psychotherapist seemed to want me to feel good about myself, and whatever they did worked. I could elaborate, but I don’t want…
When I was in second grade, after school, I went home. So did most of my friends. We played. One time, we put together a pet show. I didn’t bring Chipper, my dog, because he was just a regular dog, and didn’t know any tricks. It wasn’t his fault; we didn’t teach him any. I…