01/14 Blog

Pick a quote that strikes you as being important to your reading life as a teacher. Explain your choice and consider how it relates to your current teaching placement:

Chapter 2 of Routman talks about bonding with the students through reading and sharing. The quote I found is on page 18, “When we celebrate the stories of children’s lives, we blur the lines between home and school and let our students know that their lives matter to us.”

I love this quote. This quote is essential to the bonding process that needs to happen in the classroom for an atmosphere of learning can occur. My Master Teacher goes out of her way to tell the stories of her family, life and pets to her students, and in turn, her students can tell her the stories of their lives.

Last week, I had a chance to listen to one student’s story. The class was doing a math assessment and the student, named L, was struggling with it. He kept putting his head down, tugging his hair, and looking around. He finally got the courage to come up to my Master Teacher’s desk, but on the way there I asked if he needed any help. L then let me know that he had a funny story to tell me. He told me about his parent’s plans to go inner tube sledding down a mountain and how he had a grand plan to try and push his dad’s tube to a jump to surprise him. I laughed with him and said that it would be something to see. L then turned around, went back to his desk and got back to work with renewed enthusiasm.

My master teacher was glad that I let him talk to me, because it allowed L to burn off nervous energy and forget the assessment for a little bit. She told me to “Look at him; he is back to work and not as stressed.” I had no idea that giving him a chance share his story with me would help reduce his math anxiety.

The tricky part is going to be when I take over in the class. Talking about myself to a class of students is not something that comes easy to me. I watch in amazement as my teacher can come up with relevant vignettes for her class from the night before. Yet, when I think back to my night before, I draw a blank on any events, let alone on how to share them with an audience of 9 year olds.

I would be willing to bet that most of it is made up on the spot to relate to the day to come, yet, she does it so effortlessly and has the kids giggling about the mishaps that happen in her life. She truly has them engaged and relaxed for learning for the rest of the day