594. Norks and Noogly

The first time I heard a teacher refer to the parents of children in her class as “my parents,” it was confusing. But I haven’t yet been able to come up with another quick phrase a teacher can use to describe that group of adults. Like all groups, it’s composed of individuals, and most generalizations…

I’ve often heard children say they’re bored. When I first started hearing it, I took it quite personally. I was their teacher. An exciting, dynamic teacher, I thought. I’d had boring teachers, and I certainly wasn’t in their league. I thought I should hurry up and become more exciting, more dynamic. I later learned that…

Children often look up to us for answers, and sometimes, we don’t know the answers. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. And it’s nothing to hide. Hiding lack of knowledge sets a bad example for children. Children have all kinds of things they don’t know, and they can quickly pick up the habit of concealing…

As a child, I always enjoyed being read to, and as a teacher, I always enjoyed reading to children. In one of the classes in which I volunteer, Jerry Friedman, the father of one of the children, comes in every Friday to read a chapter or two of The Hobbit to the class. He reads…

There are times when adults herd a hundred or more children into one room, usually an auditorium, to do one thing. Usually, there aren’t too many times like that, but when it happens, it requires different behavior management techniques. Some schools have found ways to make this work smoothly. The teachers and other adults speak…

There’s such excitement when a child first utters a word. It’s the beginning of a new level of communication. We start to know so much more about the person than we could ever learn through grunts, cries, and all those other pre-verbal sounds. The moment is written down in a baby book, maybe, or at…