Apprenticeship of Observation- My education revisited

How do I remember my elementary school career? To be honest, what sticks out most is crimped hair, overalls and terribly fashionable fanny packs that I used to stuff my Beenie Babies in during class.  However, all this "90s" fluff seemed to be clouding my judgement of the more significant aspects of my educational career that have shaped my personality and nursed my knowledge of the world. With that being said, the more I thought about it, the more I picked at the finer details of the beginning of my education, the more I realized, my schools ROCKED! 

When we were asked to make a timeline of as much as we could remember about our earlier years of education I thought it impossible to remember anything majorly specific about the topics or themes that we covered. However, once I got going I couldn't stop. I realized that the things that stuck out most in my memory were the things that my teachers made a big deal out of. 

• I remembered the projects that we spent weeks on or that started out as a one worded topic, then connected to a book we read in class which connected to an idea that connected us to our own idea which eventually became our final projects. 
• I remember the projects that our teachers made us proud of by inviting all our parents to come look at all our work for a day while we talked to them about it and ate snacks and juice. 
• I remember the projects that were talked about school wide, like the second grader's rain-forest day, or the fourth grader's state fair. For these specific projects, the students were allowed to decorate their hallways and  display their work while staff, parents and students from other grades would come and admire all the work that they had done. 

All these examples really got me thinking about what I believe to be one of the most important strategies of teaching; Pride. I realized that I learned more over the years when I could tell that my teacher was proud of my work. When he or she displayed what we had worked on or allowed us to showcase it ourselves. It makes sense though, right? As human beings we put more effort into the things that we feel are valued or matter to others. It gives us a sense of purpose and success, which is what school it ultimately all about, and generally, my teachers always believed in my success. 

They believed in me.

They believed that I could overcome my struggles. 

They believed I could learn to read properly. 

They believed that I could learn to interact with my peers appropriately. 

They believed in themselves. 

They believed that they had what it took to improve my skills. 

Belief. That is another thing. Belief was a powerful propelling force in my success as a student over the years. What is effort without belief? Is success even possible without belief? It may just be that belief is a essential necessity for every student and teacher to develop and ultimately posses and practice in order to succeed.  Teaching your students to believe in themselves and in YOU, could be an important lesson for me to take away from my previous teachers. I strongly believe that besides the academic skills required to teach, even more important might be in the dispositions and attitudes that the teacher radiates. 

Another thing I recalled from my education was how the teachers that took the time to get to know me individually were the ones that were even more successful in really improving my skills and maybe even taking them to a place higher than they might have been if they hadn't taken that time to form a relationship with me. Taking a deeper approach to this concept, it makes sense that forming a special relationship or "bond" with me as a student improved their success with me. For one, the better they know me, the better they will understand my problems, how to address them and the best personalized approaches for me to fix them. In addition, it makes me, the student, feel more comfortable conversing with them about the struggles I am having as a student which could also improve how well they can help me. 

I guess what I am trying to say through all this is that I learned from my educational career that taking a back seat to teaching does not produce successful students but rather quite the opposite. Teaching and learning isn't just about the math, reading, science skills, what-have-you. It's also about the passion. It's about taking teaching and learning to a farther spectrum that focuses on the whole person. It's about learning what people care about and what motivates them in order to vastly improve their success. Call me too simplistic, but I don't think it gets more complicated than that. Students need to know that you care and believe in them while teachers need to believe in and care about the students they teach. As the band Rob Base and DJ Easy Rock would say, “It takes two to make a thing go right.” It takes a teacher and a learner to make the education system be truly effective.