are learning with issues important to them, such as advertising, the internet, and popular music. I make it my mission to never have students leave my class thinking that they will not use the information we discussed or wondering how that information relates to the world around them.
I’ll never forget when one of my students told me how she had been looking at a bridge and noticed all of its parallel lines, a subject I had covered in class. It occurred to me the student would never see bridges (or parallel lines) the same again, and when students see how the content we teach fits in to the context of their lives, that’s teaching what is real.
Be Reliable
Put simply, we cannot demand that our students be organized, focused, and passionate unless we ourselves are all of these. With each word we speak, each lesson we deliver, and each situation we react to, we’re teaching our students who we are. When we present ourselves as adults whom students can rely on, we have every right to ask our students to be reliable as well.
As an example, my students know what is expected of them well before they enter my classroom each day. My expectations of them, the procedures in my classroom, and my relaxed yet firm and consistent manner are all aspects of my teaching that my students can rely on. In cases where students make poor choices, and consequences are clear and necessary, I’ve found they often readily accept those consequences because I’ve delivered them with consistency and fairness. As I embody the traits of a reliable human being, my students learn what it takes to be reliable human beings.
Be Realistic
Living in one of San Diego’s poorest neighborhoods, my students are constantly dealing with serious issues of violence, racism, and low literacy rates (to name just a few). It is not realistic for me to expect each of my students to show up on the first day proficient in his or her academic content areas. However, throughout the year, I take students from where they are to where they can be.
In this book’s introduction (see page 2), I wrote about the importance of establishing or building in students a growth mindset (Dweck, 2006). I believe all students in my class can learn, can improve, and can surpass their own expectations of themselves, regardless of where those expectations previously began and ended. I also believe this is true of every student in every classroom. Perhaps not every one of your students will graduate from college; however, each and every one of them will someday be a neighbor, a coworker, and a person who has the potential to make a better world for those around them and those who come after them.
Summary
Educating is hard. I believe, and most teachers I know agree, educating struggling students is arguably the hardest job there is. However, it is my philosophy that, as teachers, we are working for those with the most potential to create a brighter future for everyone. This is why I teach, and this is why I love teaching. Being real with your students is an opportunity to engage in real teaching while teaching what is real.
Here’s to getting real and getting to the heart of being teachers.
Reflection Questions
Now that you have completed the chapter, consider and reflect on the following questions.
1. In a few sentences, what is your philosophy of teaching?
2. How has your philosophy changed (or stayed the same) since you first began teaching?
3. As an educator, what do you still yearn for?
4. How might you change your instructional approach to be more real with your students? How might your students benefit from such a change?
Owning It © 2019 Solution Tree Press • SolutionTree.com Visit go.SolutionTree.com/instruction to download this free reproducible.
2
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
Make the Most of the First Five Minutes of Any Class
Remember the old Head & Shoulders shampoo tagline? You never get a second chance to make a first impression.
As teachers, we actually get a chance to make a first impression every single day—often several times per day with each class we teach. With students who are accustomed to the rapidly paced sound bites and topic switches of a new media world, if we don’t grab their attention quickly, we know that they often tune us out and the rest of the class period is usually shot. That’s why the first five minutes of any class are crucial: they are an opportunity to connect with students, set the tone, convey expectations, and state in clear terms that day’s goals. In this chapter, I establish how students are your customers and then detail five strategies you can use to make the most of your first impression every day and with every class.
Students Are Your Customers
Before I was a teacher, I managed a seafood restaurant on the California coast. There, I learned many valuable lessons about the impact of first impressions, making connections, and retaining customers. Although our students can’t easily walk out and choose another place to go to school if we don’t quickly meet their needs for connection, engagement, quality, and comfort (as restaurant customers are apt to do), our students can certainly choose to not participate if those needs are not met—and then everyone loses.
As educator Lee Watanabe-Crockett (2019) writes, “In order to learn something, it must stimulate your curiosity—in other words, interest comes before learning does” (p. 21). The research of Mary Helen Immordino-Yang corroborates this in her studies on brain function: “When students are emotionally engaged, we see activations all around the cortex, in regions involved in cognition, memory and meaning-making, and even all the way down into the brain stem” (as cited in Lahey, 2016).
Strategies for Success
If you lose your students’ attention and focus within the first five minutes of class, it’s pretty tough to restore it once you dive into the deeper end of the day’s learning. Here are five critical steps—from this former restaurant manager turned teacher—toward making the first five minutes of your class both engaging and effective.
Connect Quickly
Have you ever walked into a restaurant and stood inside the door with a blank look on your face, waiting for the host or hostess to come and greet you—but the staff just whizzed around you, not acknowledging that you were there? Think about the stark contrast of this to the restaurant where someone greets you promptly at the door, warmly welcomes you, and has water and bread at the table as you’re getting comfortable.
Perhaps warm bread isn’t a part of our pedagogy, but good customer service should be. When we greet and acknowledge our students as they enter our classrooms, we make them feel welcome, relaxed, and happier to be there. Obviously, there are times when greeting each student by name is not possible; however, eye contact, an affirming nod, or a thumbs-up is often enough connection for our students to feel noticed and welcome. This means they are also more open to learning. When looking more deeply into this, R. Allan Allday and Kerri Pakurar (2017) find that when the teacher greets “problem” students at the door, student engagement increases from 45 percent to 72 percent at the start of class. In addition, and
