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