Thursday, June 28, 2012

In my fourth grade classroom, I have found that learning is a two way street. Often, I think I learn far more from my students than they learn from me. Each student is a window into a whole universe that I've never experienced. Over twenty years of teaching, my students have taught me to postpone knee-jerk reactions to their behaviors and replace it with curiosity. Listen and ask. Then listen some more. If a student comes to me with a problem, quite frequently, the problem is gone by the time they're done telling me about it.

2 comments:

  1. That's awesome! Have you heard of Collaborative Problem Solving (CPS)? The first step of CPS is to postpone our teacher knee-jerk reactions and listen to our students to find out what happened. Here's a great blog post on how it works: http://www.joebower.org/2012/06/collaborative-problem-solving-with.html

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  2. That was a really interesting article. It had a book recommended that I could go to. Thanks, Al.

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