Leading learning

“I’ve come to a frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It’s my personal approach that creates the climate. It’s my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or dehumanized.”  - H. Ginott

Schools are busy places. It doesn’t matter what role you have, there always seem to be too much to do and no time left to get it done. I don’t think people realise that it is not easy to meaningfully plan, document and assess learning when the largest part of your job involves spending time alongside your students. 

I’m not winging here. There are plenty of tools to stay on top of the work – one colleague introduced me to the 3 folders rule, one folder labelled, ‘not due yet’ the other folder marked, ‘due today’ the final folder marked ‘due yesterday’. Another colleague introduced me to the eat the frog concept – and gave me a plastic frog to remind me about my frogs. That one is too long winded to explain, go and watch this youtube clip to learn more about that, http://youtu.be/0W7GB5Fh2XM . What I’m more interested in is how quickly and easy it is to lose sight of a teacher’s role in the classroom. 

Our first role is to lead learning. To say to our students, ‘Follow me!’ We are, as Ginott points out, “THE decisive element in the classroom.” It means that regardless of the pulls and pressures that are placed on us professional and personally, our first responsibility is to educating the students in our class. Now that part is actually an easy conceptual leap – teachers educate students, nothing new here. The hard part is what and how to teach. This is where the distractions start to come into play – curriculum says teach this, team leaders says teach this, parents want this taught government wants this taught. The number of opinions on what and how to teach is endless and it is very difficult to know where to start and even harder sometimes to know if you are doing a good job. When I started out it made my head spin. Still does some days. 

I think that’s why I like Ginott’s conclusion. It reminds us that at the heart of what we all do, the most important factor in improving our teaching and our students learning is the relationship between the teacher and their class.