The profession

Children are complicated.

People have the perception that they are simple, but in fact, it’s much harder to understand a child than an adult. Adults are articulate. Adults have far greater insight into their character. Children are all at sea in life. They go where the tide takes them, and they have no idea where they’re going or why.

I’ve been watching a lot of my kids very carefully, trying to figure out what makes them tick. I’ve always loved studying people. Whether it’s a friend, a family member, co-worker or even myself, I’m always analyzing behavior, forming hypotheses, and imagining what it’s like to be in their head. This is my most practiced pasttime.

With that in mind, it should come as no surprise that I’m finding it pretty fascinating at times to be working with young children. The kids I’m working with are young enough that it’s easy to see changes in their character. By the time we reach adulthood, change is slow in us. People continue to change throughout their lives, but it usually takes much longer the older we get. With kids, it’s totally different. Even a month can make a huge difference. A kid at four can be one way, and another way entirely at five. After all, that a period equivalent to 25% of her life that just passed! Think how quickly a month passes. Now try to remember how long a month felt when you were in kindergarten. It was like an eternity.

When I first arrived I didn’t think about how much I’d be learning about kids. I hadn’t been around children much before I got here, so I didn’t really know what they were like. I mean, I remember how I perceived childhood, but that doesn’t tell me anything about how adults perceived me. I hadn’t seen childhood with an adult’s perspective. I didn’t think much about it as a way to learn about people because I assumed none of my students would have enough English to really talk to me. That assumption had two problems. The first is that many of the kids speak very good English. The second is the idea that it would matter. I know the kids in my homeroom class very very well, even though they none of them can carry a conversation. They figure out how to get their feelings across.

The things that’s been the biggest surprise to me is just how much children are like adults. They’re dead complicated. Classroom politics change all the time. The battles may revolve around crayon use, but don’t let the subject matter fool you. These kids are actually fighting for their place in the social order. And they do it with striking ability. In one of my classes, a student brought a little notebook with nicely decorated paper to school, tearing out sheets to give to her classmates as a gift. The next day, another girl in the same class struck back. She brought a notebook of her own and did the same gift-giving, except she added a twist: first she let everyone pick a sticker from her sticker book to add to their paper. The first student knew she was one-upped. You could see it. It turns out, five year olds can go to war. Or at least the girls can.

The biggest difference between children and adults, though, is that children are very impulsive. They are pushed and pulled in a thousand directions by their emotions, which they are almost helpless to resist. Everything is a whirlwind for a child. Everything is a rollercoaster. When something is funny, they laugh hysterically. When they are upset, the world is ending. Just as their pencils are wobbly under their hands, with their motor control still loose, their emotions are the same. All the tools are there, they just haven’t figured out control yet. They have a thousand complicated tasks to master before they are ready to be on their own. This is why I don’t see myself as just an English teacher. They also need to learn how to get along with others, how to express their creativity, how to stay focused on the task at hand, and dozens more essential skills. If all they learn is English, then we are failing them. They’ve got about 10 or 12 years to learn how life works, and after that, good luck to them.

In any case, I just got the book “Teach Like a Champion” by Doug Lemov. I talked about this book before. Lemov compiled a slew of teaching techniques commonly found in the most successful classrooms, named them, and explained them in a very detailed and clear book. I’m about a fifth of the way through it and it is just rocking my socks. But one thing I notice is that Lemov and I seem to agree that there’s a lot more to a teacher’s job than teaching kids the answers. Over and over again, the book explains how certain teaching techniques will encourage kids to become more intellectually curious, or to push themselves harder, or to be more self-disciplined. It seems the best teachers don’t just teach facts and figures. The best teachers teach life.

I must push myself harder as a person to be worthy of teaching of the subject.

Goodnight folks. Lots of love.


Randy