When you’re a good teacher, sometimes you have to do nothing. I mean it probably looks like nothing, but sometimes when you’ve given them the tools, you’ve got to let them use them. Alone. No hand holding. No answering questions. And I’m so pretending not to see that one kid that’s struggling right now, cause it’s his fight and the best way for me to help him is to give him space.
It’s a fickle chemistry this knowing when to step in and knowing when to let them struggle. My first instinct is to always have a conference going on, always be moving around the room, but there are times when you just shouldn’t, when you should let them be with their book or their journal and let them journey the way you do.
The best part of my job is showing kids the journey, not the one that happens sitting in a school desk, the one that happens on the floor with your journal, when you shut out the world and figure out that who you are exactly isn’t who you thought you were. Cause I’ve been lost in a journal or a book and somehow in all that lostness, I’ve found myself, and maybe my job is more about helping these kids find themselves than anything else?
2 replies on “Maybe?”
Maybe you are right. Great things to ponder. There is definitely something to be said for giving them the space and skills and time to succeed without being bailed out. Sometimes my best observations are when a group thinks I am paying attention to another group, but really I am eavesdropping on them!
Thanks for the reminder- so often I flit around my classroom…. ok maybe RUN around my classroom and never stop to just sit back and see what my kids will do with the tools that they probably have begun to master. Whew. Thank you. There’s a place for doing “nothing.”