Caution: Kids Under Construction
- Field Trips to the South
- Trust as the Foundation
- No Dissin', Just Listen
- Make Them Accountable Now
- It's Under Control
- What's Cooking?
Peter Gallant
Peter Gallant recognizes the roller coaster ride students experience in junior high school. He knows they need something solid to grasp while their life changes around them. An educator can take advantage of this situation and build student character and confidence through the hands-on medium of a skill-building program such as instrumental music, he says. Helping students discover their own strengths and building on them develops lifetime self-esteem.
"I build kids," declares Peter Gallant. Looking as if he would be equally at home swinging a hammer or a saxophone, Gallant teaches instrumental music and social studies at Summerside Intermediate School in Summerside, Prince Edward Island. "I'm not building musical talent; I'm building a whole person."
"I get the students ready for a task, then I hand over the reins," explains horse enthusiast Sherry Taylor, describing what she does in her Grade 5 classroom at George H. Luck School in Edmonton. Her years of hiking and horseback riding have given her a keen appreciation for both goal setting and the hazards of taking on a task unprepared. "I won't hand over the reins until I'm sure they're going to succeed, but then I say 'Go for it!'"
"Kids really build themselves," asserts Kim Lewis of John McGregor Secondary School in Chatham, Ontario. Her brisk, mom-next-door style gives her students confidence as they set out together to explore and express their hopes, fears and dreams. "I'm the equipment manager. I make sure they have the right tools for the job."
Though they each describe what they do differently, Gallant, Taylor and Lewis all see themselves as actively fostering the growth and development of their students. They do not simply focus on the curriculum and expect the students to follow along. "As far as I'm concerned, I'm here to teach the child first and the subject matter second," Gallant says. "I address the child's situation and needs first and bring the subject matter in later when they're receptive to what I want to teach them."
"I think of it as revealing the kids to themselves," comments Taylor. She will seek out a child's strengths and talents - whatever they may be and however well hidden - and turn the mirror around to show the child what he or she is capable of. With one discovered ability in hand, the child can find and develop others.
To illustrate, she tells of a boy she met in her first-ever teaching position. While "piss on you" is usually a figurative slur, this child acted it out literally (on Taylor). "I found out that the boy had witnessed his father attacking his mother, that the father was due to be released from jail in a few months and that the mother couldn't afford the court costs to obtain a restraining order." The boy was terrified, Taylor realized.
Rather than simply taking up a collection, Taylor found the boy a paper route. "Now he had something he could control," she recalls. "It gave him power to earn the money his mother needed and gave him a sense of his ability to control his life." He earned the school's citizenship award at the end of the year.
Field Trips to the South
While you or I may think an adventure in the South might mean visiting Kingston, Jamaica, the students of Kimmirut, Nunavut, find a trip to Kingston, Ontario, just as exotic and exciting.
Every year or two, Qaqqalik School students spend 7 to 10 days touring a Canadian city with local high school students. Their first trip was to Kingston, after a teacher there contacted Pascale Baillargeon, who teaches a variety of courses at Qaqqalik School, about organizing an exchange. Since then, the students have visited Ottawa, Montreal, Halifax and Parry Sound, Ontario.
The students act as tourists, visiting sightseeing spots, museums and art galleries, but they also visit post-secondary institutions to see where they could continue their studies once they graduate from Qaqqalik School, and meet potential employers to learn what jobs are available. Depending on the community, the students also do some outdoor activities, such as canoeing and camping.
"Typically, the students come home feeling a little intimidated, like there's so much about the world that they don't know," observes Baillargeon. But that feeling is quickly dispelled when the southern students visit Kimmirut.
Together, the students camp out on the land, go hunting, make traditional crafts and spend time with the elders of the community. Baillargeon's students show their southern counterparts what to them are very basic skills - for example, even very small children in Kimmirut know how to start a snowmobile - and act as guides and teach survival skills.
"All of a sudden my kids realize that they have a lot of knowledge themselves," she says. "They begin to develop self-esteem and pride in what they can do."
Trust as the Foundation
Kim Lewis
"I love my job! I'm very lucky to work with young people who embrace creativity and develop a true appreciation for theatre. My job remains fresh and challenging because, as each semester brings a new mix of student with new ideas, the curriculum is delivered with originality and unexpected surprises. It's incredibly rewarding to be called the Drama Mama. I call all of my student 'my babies' and proudly share in the joy of their accomplishments."
Taylor's student found he had many strengths and talents to work with once just one of them - his ability to help his mother - was revealed to him. And every student has plenty of raw material to work with, Gallant, Taylor and Lewis agree.
But what should a teacher reveal and build on first?
"Trust," responds Lewis instantly. Students must learn to trust themselves and their instincts, she says.
Lewis creates trust by starting each year with team- and trust-building exercises. These include games to encourage cooperation, immediate opportunities for leadership and the recognition of mutual respect. "I get the students on the stage on the very first day to show them that it is not intimidating, but rather a place for expression and acceptance." Each student takes a turn "performing" something of their choice - removing a watch, doing a cartwheel, perhaps even reciting a line from a favourite song or poem, Lewis explains. "Whatever the choice, it is received with applause and genuine appreciation. Eventually, much more creative choices are made."
These exercises set an expectation for openness and honesty in the class. She maintains trust by encouraging immediate positive feedback and discussion both among students and with her. Students learn that they can bring their experiences, expectations, talents and personalities to the class, knowing they will not be ridiculed or criticized.
She builds student trust and confidence with her own enthusiasm for dramatic expression, too. Lewis' professional appearance contrasts sharply with the dramatic flair of her teaching. It is a deliberate disparity, she explains, designed to show students that if someone who looks so normal - their teacher - can get out on stage and do something weird, well, so can they.
"Drama class becomes a haven for my students. I love to see them light up and get excited as they come into the class."
"Kids need to feel like they belong somewhere," affirms Gallant. In his opinion, acceptance is critical to a student's success, in school and in life. The heartbreaking ones, he says, "are the unattached students - the ones who feel they don't belong anywhere who eventually become introverts, high-risk students or the uncritical followers of any clique or gang leader."
Flood them in a river of comfort, he recommends. Drown them in acceptance, affirmation and encouragement. In his music classes and extracurricular bands, Gallant seizes on a musical ability - "You blew a really good high C there!" - and builds on it. (And he encourages his students to do the same. See "No Dissin', Just Listen," below.) His praise motivates the student to try and to succeed again. "This gives them the boost they need, the 'handle' - of affirmation, encouragement, confidence, whatever they need - to hang on to as they enter adolescence."
No Dissin', Just Listen
"You've got to slap them with the positive, then stroke them with the negative," says Peter Gallant. The instrumental music teacher from Summerside Intermediate School in Summerside, Prince Edward Island, understands that adolescence is a tumultuous roller coaster ride of uncertainty and change. What his students need most, more than fingering exercises, is "a good, deep reservoir of self-confidence."
Gallant fills his students' reservoirs with activities such as "No Dissin', Just Listen,"" a class exercise in which students give only positive feedback to one another. After one student plays a piece, the rest must make a positive statement about the performance. "It teaches one student to take risks and the rest to recognize the positive," he explains. "It's a great confidence builder for both." There is critical follow-up later, Gallant emphasizes, which is essential to their confidence and skills development.
In addition to being positive, each comment must also be different and genuine, even when that means the students have to wrack their brains. There are usually several seconds of silence between each statement in these early afternoon exercises - it works best then, Gallant says, when the students are fully awake but need something to get them energized after lunch. Eventually, though, each student does succeed in giving his or her classmate an encouraging comment.
In one memorable session, Gallant recalls, a talented student sat silently long past the normal interval. Finally, she took a deep breath and told her classmate, "You know, I didn't have the guts to play today, and you did."
Make Them Accountable Now
But unconditional love for what is at the students' core is not the same thing as unconditional love for everything they do, Taylor emphasizes. She quickly identifies mean-spirited comments or sloppy homework assignments as unworthy of her young students' real selves.
Making children accountable for their actions and performance is critical at any age, Lewis and Gallant agree. Point out mistakes, challenge inadequate effort and insist on responsibility and commitment. Doing so will help students learn what good work looks and feels like, boost their confidence in their abilities and build their self-esteem more surely than undeserved praise.
This is something Patti Sebestyen's students urgently need. At her Opening Doors Program in Saskatoon, Sebestyen teaches students who have run out of educational options. She uses what is known as perceptual control theory (see "It's Under Control," below) to teach her students to evaluate their choices, accept their mistakes and recognize their successes. "They're the only ones who can really improve their own lives."
The values of responsibility and accountability become more handles for students to hold on to, comments Gallant. By setting high standards and showing his (now confident and capable) students how to meet those expectations, he develops in them habits of responsibility, accountability and honesty. It becomes another thing they are good at, he says, and something they can build on. The self-esteem and confidence they develop become protection against later, inevitable failures.
"Problems and failure are a normal part of life," points out Taylor. Using her years of outdoor experience and scientific background to illustrate, she explains that "a wolf can't give up after several hours of unsuccessful hunting. He has to keep trying; otherwise, he'd starve." She teaches her students to keep trying, too, by coaching them on how to evaluate a failure and identify a mistake. She helps them learn to accept mistakes by letting them see her own - the times she misspells a word or forgets a task. "Acknowledging their own mistakes can be an uncomfortable experience for them," she smiles, "but by then the kids trust me enough to know I'm going to help them get through it."
Ultimately, much of this process of "building kids" - the careful and deliberate nurturing of character and development of values - takes place outside of curriculum expectations and often outside of the classroom, says Gallant. "It comes through teachable moments. You can't predict them. You just have to seize them when they come along."
For example, Gallant explains, young adolescents often either lack self-confidence or are too full of their own importance (sometimes both in the same day). An opportunity for him to teach his students to balance pride in their skills and accomplishments with an awareness of the truly important things in life arose on the way home from a large band competition.
"An American band lost four students in a bus accident on the way to the competition," he relates. On the way home, Gallant's students were admiring their trophies and keeper plaques and congratulating themselves on their performances, so at a rest stop he called four students forward and asked them to hold the trophies. "I asked for a round of applause for the bus drivers, then reminded them that while we were going home with two gold trophies that they had earned through hard work and skill, one band was going home with four fewer students." After the crying was done, Gallant says, the students spontaneously - but ceremoniously - threw their keeper plaques into the ocean.
It's Under Control
If someone punches you in the head, do you automatically punch back? If your friends use the "F" word to modify every verb and noun, do you automatically copy their speech pattern?
No, says Patti Sebestyen firmly. "If you've learned to do something, you can learn to un-do it." This is the basis of perceptual control theory, a valuable tool Sebestyen uses in her Opening Doors Program, an alternative school in Saskatoon.
Perceptual control theory was developed in the 1950s by a behavioural scientist named William T. Powers as a model to explain human behaviour. According to this theory, reactions - even apparently automatic ones - are under our conscious control.
It is all about choices and decisions, Sebestyen explains, understanding that what happens on the outside - that punch to the head, for example - is separate from the reaction to it.
Her students have a hard time understanding this at first, Sebestyen admits. "No one's ever held them accountable for their behaviour or taught them to accept the consequences of their actions." To get the point across, Sebestyen uses a regular morning discussion circle to re-examine students' everyday experiences and choices. She challenges them at every point in their narrative to ask about options: "What could you have done differently? What would have happened then?"
And when a student shows up for school on time (for a change), she praises the great choice he or she has made, modelling the positive, active approach that she is training her students to adopt. It is a big step, but one that makes a tremendous difference in students' attitudes about school and life.
For more information on perceptual control theory, see Perceptual Control Theory.
What's Cooking?
Marie-Chantal Vanier
"I'm not normal and I don't teach normal classes," says Marie-Chantal Vanier. Normal, she explains, encourages our worst habits of staying inside the lines, just learning the subject matter. "What children need is to learn how to solve problems, how to work in a disciplined way by themselves and with others and, most importantly, how to keep or reacquire the taste for learning they are born with."
"In life, we have to learn to use our brain for more than just storing a lot of knowledge," says Marie-Chantal Vanier, who teaches students with learning disabilities at École Lac-des-Fées in Gatineau, Quebec. "We have to learn to collect a number of tools for figuring things out." Vanier has found that a good place to collect some of those tools is the kitchen.
"I get kids who have never touched food; they've always just eaten what was put in front of them," says Vanier. When they first encounter the transformation in ingredients that happens in cooking, it amazes them. Things are not as they first appear. It takes many ingredients to make a sauce. Crepes start out liquid and become solid.
Cooking is good for her students' cognitive skills, Vanier says, since they must follow the steps as they are written in the recipe. Cooking gives the students a feeling of control of their environment. "And I have students who need to stop daydreaming on some other planet and see that they can do stuff on this one," she comments with characteristic frankness. A simple success, such as making a sauce, convinces them.
Shopping is another adventure. Armed with a list, which has been cross-checked with the budget, students head to the grocery store, where they encounter other challenges. The cheese is not with the onions! And Parmesan is not with the other cheeses! "Everything has to be reasoned out," Vanier comments, which is another excellent learning exercise.
Vanier uses the kitchen and food to help her students develop problem-solving skills and confidence in their abilities. Patti Sebestyen, who runs an alternative school called the Opening Doors Program in Saskatoon, knows that food can help students learn basic life skills as well.
Cooking lunch for the program's students and staff for a whole week gives young people an "amazing sense of pride," explains Sebestyen. Each week, one student plans the menus, does the grocery shopping (accompanied by Sebestyen's assistant, Sherry) and cooks all the food. Once the student has served the meal and everyone has eaten, he or she washes the dishes and cleans up the kitchen.
Why a whole week? "A week is a significant period of time," Sebestyen says. "A day would be just playing. A week makes it a job." Many students learn to prepare for their duty week by asking relatives and searching the Internet and library for recipes. They learn to ask Sherry for help, too, a significant step for young people who have had few adults they can turn to with trust.
Sebestyen also uses the school lunches to teach table manners - "not by nagging them about it," she points out. "I just look at them and ask, 'What are you supposed to be doing right now?'" Then it is the students' responsibility to remember to take their elbows off the table, or to clear their plates and push in their chairs.
Though it seems like a simple exercise, Sebestyen says, "cooking is the most fascinating, amazing revelation for them. They learn they can take care of themselves in this area and, most importantly, follow through on a big job."