I’ve worked in the education industry for a while now and I’ve not yet failed to get passionate about the learning of my students nor have I failed to get passionate about my own children. When my children started school I wanted them to learn to hold a pencil correctly and then move onto things like following directions and figuring out what the r-controlled vowels are and how to identify them. They had a lot to discover during those formative learning years. Some of my children picked this up earlier than others, but in the end I wanted all my kids to learn to be responsible for their learning. As much as all of my offspring want to be responsible, it’s a difficult thing to teach when they’re in their teen years. It’s a lesson that gets re-taught all the time.

As much as I want my children to reach the standards and hit the high marks, I still have to keep teaching. Things don’t work out easily when I’m doing this. In fact, sometimes it’s as hard for me to teach my own children things that I’ve taught someone else’s kid to do easily within the classroom confines. And when those things don’t work I have to examine what it is I’m doing in order to see where the breakdown is. More often than not, it’s not their fault for not learning, but mine for failing to instruct them in a way that makes sense to their brains.

This lesson became clear to me back in the late 90’s when I was looping with my students from 6^th to 8^th grade. I had the same students for three years in a row and got to know them well. I got to know their learning styles and ways to motivate them to reach higher standards than I originally thought possible. The biggest lesson for me during that time was this: Kids will do what you think they think they can do. I did a study skills unit with my students at the beginning of the school year because I wanted to train them early about how the processes and procedures that I came to appreciate as a system in my classroom. After giving them a learning styles quiz, I put them into the groups of learners they most fit: auditory, reading/writing, kinesthetic/tactile, and visual. As part of this unit, I had them do an activity that would help me, the teacher, learn about how they learn. Basically, we were engaging in metacognition. We had to know what we know before we could really KNOW anything. One group in particular struck me as hilarious. The task was to create a visual aid for me that would be posted in the classroom as a reminder of how my students learn so that I would remember to engage all learners and not just one subset.

I’m not very type A at all. Organization isn’t my strength. Flying-by-the-seat-of-my-pants is how I liked to operate as a teacher and many a lesson was scrapped because it wasn’t going according to plan and once I recognized that I began to see my teaching as a way to connect with students and meet them where they’re at instead of forcing them to always learn something because that’s the way I like it. I already knew the material. My task was to get them to know it.

So this group, this microcosm of the student set in the classroom, was filled with type A students. When I asked them what they didn’t like about my teaching it always revolved around something creative and off the cuff I had created. If we were in straight rows with our desks, they were happy. If I wanted to do something wild like making our desks into the shape of a butterfly then they would be so frustrated with me. As they began their project I observed the system they created in their group. The end project wasn’t what I was really interested in (though it would hang on my wall later) but rather the science of how their brains work to come up with the end product. Before they could even start to form the way their poster would look they took all 24 of the markers and all 24 of the crayons out of the boxes and lined them up. ACCORDING TO COLOR. First, they would lay down a purple marker, then a purple crayon. Next, a blue marker and then a blue crayon. Watching them was fascinating. They had to have ORDER before LEARNING. They couldn’t even form sentences until things were in place. After that, they elected a person to act as facilitator for their group. They wanted that one person to be the one who got out of their seat if they had to get more paper or if they had to ask me a question. Sure, they could have raised their hand, but then they’d have to wait for me to come over to them and they didn’t like that idea (and I was such a tra-la-laaaa kind of teacher that I let them get out of their seats and come to me. Shocking, I know!).

Of course, the group that was most like me was a beautiful mess. They had their crap all over the place and still functioned. They laughed, had fun, took ideas as they came, and added to them as they saw fit. Oh, this didn’t fit on the poster we’re making? No problem! We’ll just tape an addendum to it on the bottom of the page. Oh, there are no categories or lists here? FINE. We’ll just put bubbles and stars around the words on the paper and draw lines connecting them! Honestly, they reminded me of how wild my brain works most times. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy a neat workspace or relish in organization sometimes. I do. I just don’t like being the one that has to make it neat and organized in the first place. I can learn amongst the chaos. I practically thrive there.

This is where I learn. Writing is how I figure things out. This writing space is where I can leave my mess and sometimes find solace that others know this mess, like this mess, learn in this mess. I hadn’t set out to write about the time I taught my 6th graders how they learn. What I wanted to write about was a response a teacher gave me about one of my own children recently.My child wasn’t doing well in her class and she offered the most pathetic response a teacher can give.  She said, “Every child has the right to fail” and I disagreed so vehemently with her that I had to do deep breathing exercises on the phone with her for the longest 23 minutes of my life. There was a brief moment during that phone call where I had a fantasy in my head which included bludgeoning and things that live only in the mind of Quentin Tarantino. But I don’t think I got through to her at all. I see re-teaching in my future where she’s concerned. It sounds pretentious, I know, but I hope that through whatever efforts are afforded to me I can teach her the lesson I learned as a teacher: Kids will do what you think they think they can do. 

Unfortunately, the only thing she’s taught my child thus far is that she doesn’t think he can do anything.