Connecting with Kids - Listen Up Teachers/Dalton Sherman

The following was part of our faculty meeting on 12.8.10.

Our school was gifted with a set of books, 'Listen Up, Teacher!' I'd been toiling with what would make a great first book for a book study and this turned out to be a right-on-time gift.  It's a great, quick read written by educators using students' perspectives.  Below, I took several pages and just highlighted some key points. There are a lot of worthy points in this book and we can spend days on one chapter, but this was cool for idea generating and experience sharing:

Listen Up Teacher on Prezi

 We immediately launched into this great video presentation from a dynamic middle school presenter in Texas. He speaks better for himself than I ever could:

Our message that day was its not about me or you [Principal or Teacher], our talks and efforts have to be about the kids.

• Do we believe in our kids? - Are we designing lessons to produce fantastic, bold students like Dalton Sherman?
• Do you know your kids? - I shared some of my experiences growing up and asked the teachers if they knew which kids didn't have heat yet? Which haven't had new clothes in a while?

Dedicating our lives to teach kids means we will engage in a lifelong pursuit to better our skills but we can't forget that we teach kids, not subjects.