A letter to Elizabeth
Dear Elizabeth,
Thanks for commenting on my posting on Confidence–I am so glad that Facebook has made us intellectual neighbors again, even though we live in different countries. I enjoy reading about your life these days, and freely confess to being envious often of the life you live.
In my current position, where I have the opportunity and the privilege to talk to groups of teachers and administrators fairly often, I talk about you quite a lot. You are part of my teaching story. I was a lousy special ed teacher. I talk about teaching next door to an outstanding special ed teacher, and knowing that it was going to take me 10 years to get as good as you. So I stopped teaching special ed and went and taught something I was actually equipped to be good at.
The part of my posting that you commented on was about relationships, and how important they are. You had great relationships with kids; for some of them, I believe that your relationship with them was the only positive relationship they had in school. But I think you under-sell yourself. You also had amazing skills.
So here’s my quandary. Teachers as great as you talk a lot about relationships with kids. But that relationship wouldn’t be worth anything to an at-risk kid if you didn’t also have the skills to teach them the content and the skills they need. What you focus on is the relationship, but if I tell a teacher who doesn’t have your skill set that relationships are the most important thing, what are they supposed to do with that?
Take me, for example. When I stopped teaching special ed and started teaching geography, I had great relationships with the kids in my class. When I joined Facebook, I instantly got friend requests from a large group of them, who included lovely messages. And do you remember when some of my ninth-graders started a Stevie fan-club, and posted fliers around the school? That was embarrassing, not least because I think many of the teachers thought I had started it myself.
My point is that I was not a different person when I began teaching geography. What was different was that I had a clue about teaching geography, whereas I was woefully ill-equipped to teach special ed. So my focus when working with teachers is the skills part. And I think that’s the right thing to do, because I have more control over that. So what do you think?
October 27th, 2009 at 8:45 pm
Very poignant posting, Isobel. I think that it is hard to get to the skills part without building relationships and connections with kids. Foundationally, most things we do in life start by building relationships. But, I also see your point about building skills. Hence the question, does the chicken or the egg come first?
I think this reigns true for many teachers. I think what I struggle with is how you get someone to the right position so they can truly build relationships with kids AND have the right skill-set for it. Or more importantly, how do you get someone to see for themselves that a change is somehow necessary to start building relationships? Or is it about getting the teachers the right skill set first? I can teach skills, I can’t teach some people how to build relationships…
P.S. I like the snow effects! Very appropriate!
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Isobel Stevenson Reply:
October 27th, 2009 at 8:47 pm
Yes, chicken and egg, good analogy, wish I’d thought of it.
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November 3rd, 2009 at 9:57 am
Here’s Elizabeth’s reply from Facebook.
“Hello, Isobel!
What a great way to describe it–yes, it’s so nice to be “intellectual neighbors” again. How I loved and valued “talking shop” with you, way back when. I’m impressed, when I read your blog, how much you’re still contributing to teachers and education in Boulder.
How kind you are. Thank you for your comments.
Here’s my response to your question, off the top of my head.
Teach the skills. They must come first.
I think it goes back to the confidence issue, and to the general educational principal of mastery learning. When we master our content (subject area and best practices), and have confidence we know it, we are freed to focus on the other skills and arts of working with students.
Additionally, unless we feel we’ve mastered our content, we don’t have the right standing from which to gain the respect and trust of our students. They feel our solid grounding, I believe. I think the next set of skills relate to managing a classroom. I felt secure in my ability to do that. Having skills left me loads of “free attention” to focus on relationships with students. And to be creative with my content and practice.
So, you’re right to focus on teaching the skills. I don’t agree with the saying about students don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. They want their teachers to be know a lot! Otherwise, they’re being cheated.
Still, my experience was–especially with challenged populations–a relationship of caring, trust and respect with a student is what makes it all work. It’s the magic.
How do you teach teachers to build relationships…that’s a tough one! I think we learn it on the job and there’s no one way to do it, because our personalities and styles differ.”
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