By Becky Goerend
Mrs. Goerend wrote this blog post to remind teachers not only to watch what they say in front of their students, but also how they say these things. She realized this while having a conversation with another teacher about their sixth grade students not giving them respect. She asked the other teacher how she speaks to her students, because with sixth graders respect is earned and lost from them quickly.
Mrs. Goerend then told a story about how a young girl accused her of calling the student stupid a few years earlier. She had taken the teachers comment of “you may struggle” and twisted it into “my teacher called me stupid.” Mrs. Goerend explained the complexity of the situation and wrote this post to remind teachers not to take thing so personally. The main objective of this post is for teachers to remember things look differently to students and we should all act like professionals because we are professionals.
She then asked for other people to comment on experiences that they have had in this situation. I read through the comments and found that this seemed to be a common problem.
My response to this was about an experience I had recently while doing my early field experience at a local elementary school. One teacher got onto two boys for “fooling around” in the hallway and it prompted one of them to tell the teacher I follow about someone he knows, and respects, that also fools around. I am absolutely certain that he did not understand the meanings of what he had said, but this was a good example of how much children hear.
I am glad to have read her post about this because I will admit I was extremely shocked that this had happened. Because of this post, I have realized that this can happen more often than expected. This is a good reminder to anyone to watch what you say and the tone you use when talking to students of all ages.
by Becky Goerend
When I first read this post, I had no idea how awesome this was going to be. Mrs. Goerend said that she noticed that many of her students were bummed about their grades and she could tell that they were stressed. She had heard about the Interlude Dance and taught it to her students. She then let them dance it out in the classroom and they began to let go and have fun.
The point of this post is for teachers to realize that students need to “let go” and relieve “stress” sometimes just like the teachers do. She said that this 10 minute activity gave her and her class freedom and even thought it took them a little while to wind back down, it gave the room a different ambience.
She asked teachers to post what they do in their classrooms to help bring down student’s stress levels. I had no idea what this dance was, and thankfully she posted a link to it. My response changed immediately. I expressed my gratitude for having such a great post. I never thought about what teachers could do in their classrooms for students stress. I have never had a teacher do anything like this for me before, so the idea was new and exciting.
Below is the YouTube video for the Interlude Dance that was invented at the University of Northern Iowa. I would recommend it for a stress reliever in a classroom!
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