Paper Work is Easy, Kids are...Complex

My next few semesters consist of some child psychology and education philosophy courses. I’m really looking forward to the child psychology, I think I need to spend some time focusing on behavioral cues of children and how to warrant their respect and attention.
I have probably mentioned before that I really don’t get to spend a lot of time around children. This is a large source of anxiety to me considering that every day is going to be spent managing a large group of children, by myself, in less than two years!
The holidays are a time when I get to practice on my all of my cousins’ kids. I observe, try to engage them in conversation about what they are learning and think of creative ways to get involved in their activities. But who am I kidding really- they probably think I am a major dork. They are on vacation and there are presents and cookies involved so the last thing they want to do is talk to some “old woman” about school stuff. I’m afraid I just don’t have one of those “everything comes natural” personalities around kids. Is this something that will develop with experience? I’m kinda hoping so.
Teaching, I realize, involves quick wits and thinking on your feet. I think that it's in large part important to dealing with the unpredictable nature of children as much as it is a part of the profession in general. It’s strange that the top complaints of most teachers are the administration and the loads of paperwork- but that doesn’t scare me (probably because I have spent the last 12 years in the corporate world- politics and paperwork are, unfortunately, part of my daily life.) What scares me is the thought of a bunch of little people discovering my weakness and then walking all over me. Please, someone, validate this as normal pre-teacher anxiety!
Since I am a very cerebral type of person, I hope that studying child psychology will inevitable help me gain some confidence in this area, although I think my senior year of immersion in the field will be my best chance at developing a sense of comfort with this.
Does anyone have any great tips to share on how to earn the respect and attentiveness of a class? Some of the good pieces of advice people have already offered me are:
1. When trying to get a child to follow your lead- offer two options so that the child will feel like he/she has control over a situation, yet still the comfort of structure.
2. Show respect by not embarrassing a child in front of his/her peers
3. Allow children to talk about their emotions and explain their reasons before determining an appropriate punishment.
4. Show humility- admit that you make mistakes and be willing to laugh about them.
I have held these pieces of insight in the back of my mind because I think they make a lot of sense and will be valuable things to use when I am faced with challenging situations in the classroom.
What do you do when you have a child that just refuses to listen? I have a friend whose daughter is like that. She is completely strong willed and I sometimes wonder if she ignores adults because she is testing them or if she just completely tunes us out and is in her own zone. There have been some occasions where I was able to get her attention by casually saying that we wouldn’t be doing something she was looking forward to that day if she didn’t listen now. I really don’t like using this technique because to me it feels like blackmail, but psychologists and other experts say that the system of reward/ punishment is not blackmail and is a completely appropriate technique to use with children. During my observation hours I witnessed the use of this technique a lot and I often hear or read about teachers using this. I have to say, with my friend’s daughter it worked. It seems to me that if you begin to rely too much on something like this, the rewards/ punishments will have more control over the classroom than the teacher does. There has to be a more empowering way than the fear of losing or the hope of gain that works just as well. I hope to find answers to these questions in my class…

CatchUp

I’ve just been through a week of hell in my personal life, and trying hard to play catch up this week since finals are next week. Sometimes I just don’t feel up to the task of pursuing a new career while trying to juggle everything else in life. To all those aspiring teachers who are going to college fresh from High School- don’t give up, it’s so much harder to go back later on in life! So many people told me that when I was young, and yet I refused to listen. Boy, do I regret it now!
So this past semester hasn’t offered me very much to contemplate as far as education goes, in fact at times I feel like it’s offered me nothing more than an opportunity to complain about a horrible math course! Soon that will be all over and I can move on to better subjects.
Starting in January I have a child psychology course that I am looking forward to. Hopefully it will lead to some writing inspiration.
Just one last reflection on math though- because I have been reading in other blogs that math topics in many districts start as early as kindergarten! When I first read that, I thought it was crazy. I couldn’t grasp the concept of teaching kids who, developmentally, are still trying to master activities of daily living, to “reason mathematically.” After taking this course though, I can’t help but wonder- if they were doing this back when I was in kindergarten or first grade, would I better be able to grasp mathematical thinking? My problem with the course has not been understanding how the problems are solved, when given a solution, but rather the fact that I would never have conceived of that solution on my own. Somewhere, my brain lacks a neural pathway between taking a problem, and using mathematical reasoning to solve it. Maybe exposing children at a very young age to math is not such a crazy idea after all- I have a much more open mind about this now, and have been challenged to come up with ways to explain difficult concepts to young children, as I have to develop those to make sense of it in my own mind. So something good did come out of the experience, but I am still ecstatic that it is nearly over now! The course was 2 semester’s long and I am ready for it to be done….for good.
On a light note, my cousin’s son lost several of his baby teeth in a school playground accident. He was so devastated because the teeth were lost in the grass and he wasn’t going to be able to put them under his pillow for the tooth fairy. His first grade teacher (bless her soul) sent him home with an excuse note to put under his pillow, so he could still get credit for all the teeth! So cute :)