More than just our subject area

Top Six Keys to Being a Successful Teacher: (thanks to Melissa Kelly at About.com

- Sense of Humor
- A Positive Attitude
- High Expectations
- Consistency
- Fairness
- Flexibility

And I agree. Those are six things that I try to do every day when I walk into a classroom. And on any day when I've walked out of a classroom and felt like I could I have done better, I can identify the failure as having forgotten one (or more) of those things. But there's something else missing in this list. Not so much a seventh item as a reminder that these six things need to be applied to both sides of education - our subject area, and the student's social and emotional development. We are a major influence on a child's life for years, and that's more than just reading, writing, and arithmetic.

We hope that when children arrive in school for the first time, for preschool or kindergarten, that their parents have given them enough support and assistance in basic development that they are prepared for the social interactions of school, as well as the mental challenges.

"In the first five years of life, 85 percent of the brain is developed," said [Dr. Kathleen Armstrong, director of pediatric psychology at the University of South Florida medical school], "Those early relationships, more than anything else, help wire the brain and provide children with the experience to trust, to develop language, to communicate. They need that system to relate to the world." (Lane DeGregory, "The Girl in the Window", St. Petersburg Times, July 31, 2008)

How is this important to us as educators?

"...It can be said that the human being is born with various body systems and biological programs, and that these programs are switched on not only by some inner mechanism but also by interaction with the environment, particularly emotionally rich and tender stimuli from daily life. We must provide this warm, loving quality at home and school, so that we can make the most of the innate programs of the child. A child can learn better with the "joie de vivre" that is an essential part of the best kind of education. A positive and emotionally rich environment is not a luxury but actually a necessity for better education in the coming 21st century." (Noboru Kobayashi, M.D., "The Emotional Basis of Learning", 1991, New Horizons for Learning)

If they have not been prepared in their homes, their development will be stunted, and that includes their ability to learn our subject matter. What responsibility do we then have?

According to one judge, we (as a school district) still have full responsibility because "the emotional and educational issues were so interrelated that there was no way to determine whether [the student] would be better served if only educational or psychological services were provided." ("What School is All About", Valerie Maholmes, 2007)

It's important to remember that those 6 characteristics listed above must apply to how we as teachers reach out to students in more than just how we approach the content we try to teach.

"...Healthy development is essential to learning. Students thrive academically when there is support for their development as human beings. Young children whose teachers encourage exploration, take care to explain what they are doing, listen to them, and tailor the classroom environment to the children's abilities and interests tend to be more successful academically."("What School is All About")