Our Students Must Believe that We Believe in Them ~ and that kind of Complete Belief takes Complete Love

Sitting up late tonight listening to songs and I came across one by Mumford & Sons called, "Believe".

I watched the official video and then the one with the lyrics.........Then I watched them both again.

The new school year starts in a week, and I need to believe in a group of students I've never met, at a school where I've never taught. 

How do I get these students to believe in themselves? How do I get them to believe in me?

After closing my eyes and listening to the lyrics over and over, I now know how.

I have to first believe in them. 

But how do I get myself to believe in them; and believe I can have the strength to hold onto them each day all the time?

I need to go back to what I DO KNOW about each one of them, even though I've never met any one of them. 

I KNOW they all learned how to walk, and if they all learned how to walk then I KNOW they all can learn how to think.

How did they ALL learn how to walk? They were all COMPLETELY BELIEVED IN that they could learn how to walk. 

And just how were they ALL completely believed in?

They were all COMPLETELY LOVED by those around them; because powerful, pure, unquestioned BELIEF in another TAKES powerful, pure, unquestioned LOVE for another.

So then all I need to do is COMPLETELY BELIEVE in their ability to think, to learn, and to grow by COMPLETELY LOVING their potential to do so. 

But I'm just a teacher, and I've heard that those who can, do; and those that cannot, teach. Who am I to believe I can do this? 

Well, because I know the opposite is true; that those who CAN LOVE and CAN BELIEVE IN OTHERS........are called TEACHERS!

This is what we do, and these lyrics are our students' challenge to us. And successfully meeting this challenge goes far beyond determining how well they do on the state tests.

How well we meet this challenge affects how much they will love and believe in themselves, and be able to love and believe in others, as adults.

What we do this year affects them forever. I'd say they're all worth fighting for, and not fighting with.

Listen closely to our children's words:

Failure...Good and Bad

I seem to react to student failure in different ways. Three students failed to get on the Accelerated Reader board while I was away on my trip. This means the class as a whole achieved phenomenal success (usually a teacher has about three students achieving great success consistently). But since no one in any class is a failure, no teacher should ever allow any student to continue failing to achieve.

Coincidently, these three students were also failing at the beginning of the year. With hard work and lots of love and patience to figure out their learning styles, and then being taught in that way, they all achieved more success this year than they ever had.

But in not succeeding in my absence, it means the teacher has not succeeded in helping them become independently successful......and with one month left of school, time is running out to do so.....

They know how much I care about them, which allows me to "drop the hammer" and push them harder in an attempt to develop their self-esteem. The message is that they are not failures, and need to get to the point where they refuse to allow themselves to "fail".



Others, like Luis however, have experienced so much success with or without me that their self-esteem is sky high....and "failure" to them means they are one step closer to succeeding (ala Thomas Edison). They know they are not failures, even when they fail at something new. This allows me to push them into higher levels of failure in the role of a guider, versus a motivator and strength coach.

They try new things and inevitably experience failure, but learn from those failures.......have the courage to try again.....and experience subsequent new successes.....serving to further increase their self-esteem and intelligence. This in turn makes them more marketable upon entering the real world.

At this point they are beginning to truly become unstoppable, as opposed to the students in the first video who still let failure stop them.

In this video Luis is being taught how to use his student science textbook and two teacher books to come up with a better experiment to figure out why his previous experiment went wrong. He is learning how to pull specific information from resources and making his textbook work for him, versus having to sit quietly and obediently at his desk and working from his textbook.

A Life For a Life ~ Changing the Future NOW

Half the battle is to get students just to behave and work hard. Daiquan and I butted heads big time in the beginning of the year. In his anger and misbehavior I saw a great fire for change, if I could just redirect it.

So I took a gamble and offered him a choice; either believe in himself as much as I did, or put a bullet in my head to get rid of me, because I was going to be in his face pushing him every day. If I was going to believe in him and take a chance on him, I was going to go all the way with with it.


But working hard doesn't mean any real learning is taking place. I joke about the new Bee Movie coming out, with Jerry saying "Maybe this time. Maybe this time. Maybe this time", over and over as he smacks his head against a closed window, trying to get out.



It's analagous to working hard but not working smart, on the part of both teacher and student. Too many adults trying hard end up on the windowsill of life, exhausted and dying, wondering why their dreams never materialized. Too many teachers take solace in reaching that one kid. I don't want this to happen to any of my kids.


If we're going to help them long-term, we have to work smart; we have to listen to them, to understand them, to their way of thinking, and where they are in the stages of knowledge and why. It's about them, and how great they could be, not about what a great teacher we are or how hard we work for no pay.

Anyone can criticize, complain and judge, and it's too easy to say, "I tried. I did my job but it's not my fault." The job is developing the child, not the lesson.

Wisdom how to do this comes from listening to them, knowing that we know nothing about their individual stories until we ask, and then knowing what lessons we need to develop for them.

Only by taking time with each student can we best build a solid bridge of learning, taking them from where they are, to where they need to be.
Thoughts are key, but emotions are powerful. Can you imagine what Daiquan is feeling now, and the new, more empowering thoughts he is having?

I don't think he's having thoughts of taking me out.

I think he's thinking thoughts that are changing his life...

...and able now to help others change theirs.

(Taken this morning, reading to his little brother.) Kicked off the bus again, and getting dropped off very early now, it was pointed out he only began behaving when he saw me pull into the parking lot.

I pointed out that he still chose to change his behavior, and I still have seven months to get him to do it without needing me or anyone else as motivation. Seven more months of my life, for 70 plus years of his greatest possible life.

The time to live and give is NOW, that's how we change the future.