Not for One of these Children not for One Day of their Lives

Einstein said that if we can't explain something simply enough it means we don't understand it well enough.



I had to redo my teacher observation again, for yet another year again, which I've had to do each year again since this teacher observation checklist has been used......and not because I was bad....I was so bad that my lesson wasn't even score-able, again.....



It was so far out of the box that there wasn't any place to score it on the checklist, again.



On my redo I scored so high that in the observer's professional opinion some of these previously below-grade-level 2nd-graders are now ready to succeed in middle school.



I have to accept that if I'm going to teach the way I do I’ll never win any awards and I’ll never fit on anyone’s acceptable checklist. And I must understand it well enough to communicate it simply enough for others to follow.



It sounds like I'm putting them down but I'm not. The students have been with me now for four months...... They can read the Latin, Greek, German, French, and Italian on the board......They don't have to be told what to think because they have been taught how to think and how to figure out what the teacher isn't directly stating by paying attention to what the teacher's questions are indirectly stating and guiding them to focus on.



While these students have become more fluent in the language of learning and how to think at the higher levels, to an outside observer using a connect-the-dots checklist there are just too many gaps and too many thoughts and ideas zooming around the brains in class for one to follow.



Except for the students. And if the way I'm teaching not only helps them succeed at their grade level and beyond, I owe it to them to make my teaching acceptable and understandable to others, at least for a few days a year.



Because I know that all of these students have become more intelligent and more powerful where it really matters, in solving life's problems and frustrations.



I know not one of them will ever think that the solution is a bullet coming out of a gun.



Not one of them will become, as I think this song is talking about, among the 289 Americans who get shot every day by those who "think" that’s what the answer is.



Not for one of these children and not for one day of their lives will they ever think at this low of a level ever again.



And maybe one of these days one of these children will solve this problem once and for all.