*Note: Copied over from morning pages journal vol.6, personal journal vol. 9, dated 2/3/2019

What is a classroom for?

Early on in my education career, I was faced with a decision. After the chaos of the first year had receded into the darkness of my mind and the 2nd year hiccups were scared out of me, I stood in front of a class.

Kids.

Kids ready to learn.

I saw what any classroom could become if it was given enough care. Enough attention. Enough love. My 2nd year was a big turning point for me.

A classroom is a community, akin to a town or village. There’s hierarchies, leaders, mayors, trusted members of the neighborhood, suspected burglars you shut your window in front of, and village drunks everyone learns to ignore.

No village is perfect.

But.

It should run like one if the mayor is doing his job. The mayor, obviously, being the teacher. If you’re the teacher then your job is to ensure the progress and success of the village. A good mayor doesn’t intervene at every opportunity, but is smart enough to know when they need to keep villagers from killing each other.

Their style is order, but not at the expense of freedom. Events have to play out in a classroom to reach a good end point.

Hi, me in the present now.

I think what I tried to get at in this entry was some sort of teacher mantra, something to keep in your mind while working the room. A thousand thoughts a day go by in front of you, and you can’t always respond to everything, so to keep the flow you need to loosen the reins to have a productive day.

In short, if you see a kid doing something they shouldn’t really be doing, sometimes it’s okay to let it go. So long as the classroom still runs, let it go.

Not sure what this has to do with anything, but maybe there’s an educator out there that needed to hear this.

Thanks for reading,

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