Picturing the best in kids
In my first year at Inman High School I had a few tough kids. These were students that were used to having new teachers for breakfast. Whenever a colleague wanted to give me the skinny on a student, I refused to hear it. I knew that the kid would know I'd been told and live down his or her reputation. To keep my mind open no matter how scary kids were trying to look, I took the old grade school yearbook photos of my kids as kindergarteners and glued them to my seating chart. This way I always pictured them correctly, as kids full of possibility, someone's little baby. The other thing I did was to "always" treat the one I feared the most like the only one I could trust. This alone payed huge dividends for everyone concerned.
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Permalink Reply by Skip Zilla on -
Your technique of pasting grade school photos on a high school seating chart, putting yourself in a state of mind to see these high schoolers still as the children they are, reminds me of a Zen practice is some ways. I subscribe through iTunes to Zencast and had listened a few days ago to a podcast titled "Equanimity." The podcast seems to relate the same mental quality/state that you were trying to find in using your technique. Here's a link to the website that originated the podcast.
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