Who Says you Can't Play Golf with Apples?

What do you do to help your students learn in a climate of optimism and hope? Do you have a successful strategy you can share?

Be flexible. Be flexible. Be flexible. This will help create a classroom shared by both teacher and student. Being flexible does not mean letting students always have their way, or always getting to do what they want. Being flexible means listening to what they have to say, considering their ideas, and weighing their suggestions as you plan and carry out your lesson and activities, rubrics and long-range planning. Students who feel that they are valued and part of all aspects of a class will work harder and care more about you and their learning.

 

I would consider myself to be a thoughtful person, at least that is what others say of me.That's both a positive and a negative in my life. Because being thoughtful means you weigh things, you want lots of input to make a decision and you want to consider everything and everyone who is part of the decision. To put it bluntly, I am not someone who pulls the trigger, goes off on a whim, jumps off the deep end first, throws caution to the wind.  

Even though I may have missed some unplanned and spontaneous moments in my personal life,  being a thoughtful person has been very beneficial in my teaching because I do always consider alternate solutions, look for the middle ground and will always try new things. Like the poster says- Who says you can't play golf with apples? I am always will to listen to why that student did not have a homework, or give him/her time to explain why they were acting a certain way. Maybe there is something I was missing. Because after all my 25 years of teaching I still don't know everything- so why not consider other alternatives and solutions?  I would like to believe that being flexible with my students has led to those many smiles, cares and Facebook friend requests that I get as time marches on.