Tag Archives: role model

You don’t know

One of the challenges of being an educator… Sometimes you don’t know.

You don’t know that the way you say something triggers a kid.

You don’t know that a kid missed breakfast, or that they didn’t have anything in the house they could have for breakfast.

You don’t know that after school they have to fend for themselves, and maybe a younger sibling too.

You don’t know how abusive a parent is.

You don’t know how stupid a kid feels.

You don’t know how crippling perfectionism is.

You don’t know the root cause of misbehaviour.

You don’t know the bullying was happening until it went too far.

You don’t know how important your validation is.

You don’t know how hard the learning challenges really are.

You don’t know that the distracted kids really wants to pay attention but the distractions are too loud in their heads.

Sometimes you don’t know what you needed to know about a kid to be a better teacher for them.

Ah, but then sometimes you don’t know…

How appreciated you are. How much you are looked up to. How valuable your connection is to a kid for whom you are the only caring adult that listens to them.

Sometimes you don’t know that the joke you shared in class was the only smile a kid had that day. That you make a kid feel smart. That you are the only person to give a kid a 4th chance because life isn’t baseball and no kid deserves only 3 strikes.

Sometimes you don’t know how valuable you are to the kids, the families, and the community you serve.

Children see, children do

This clip is 15 years old now, but still as powerful as when it was made:

It reminds me not just of kids copying bad behaviour, but the fact that they do indeed copy a whole lot of what adults do. Ever see a kid talking on the phone, mimicking their parents, speaking in baby-talk even before they can construct sentences? Ever see kids pretend to go to work? Ever see kids pushing a much-too-big-for-them shopping cart in a grocery store, putting items into it?

Kids copy our behaviour. They copy our good habits, our patterns of speech, and our kindness. And like the video, they copy our biases, our prejudices, and our bad habits. We model the world for our kids.

A funny aside to this is that parents will think to themselves, “I’m going to be a better parent than my own.” They reflect on things their parents did and think of different or better ways to raise their own kids. But this hilarious cartoon describes the end result:

Jokes aside, it matters how good our parents were, and it matters how good we are as parents. Our kids will take from us some good values and lessons that we intentionally give them, but they will also take a multitude of lessons from watching us and learning from us whether we intend them to or not. We are their role models and what children see, children do.

Here come the kids…

School starts next week. Kids will be entering schools in BC after many of them have been absent since the start of March break.

Yes, some will be anxious, and many will be nervous. But I believe most students are (also) exited and looking forward to it! Let’s make sure adults, parents and educators alike, model the enthusiasm we want to see.

We can be cautious without showing fear. We can be safe without projecting anxiousness. We can show our own nervousness as excitement and enthusiasm.

What we project will be projected back to us.