Michael Grinder here. I just want to welcome all the teachers to hopefully a better year, 2022, than we had in 2021.
Now I’m wearing the traditional New Year’s Eve hat, but I’ve put something in it. I’ve put in some Q-tips, promise I’ll explain.
But let’s first talk about the kind of students that we have in our classroom. If you think about it, for a year and a half, they’ve been electronically occupied at home.
Now, the advantage for them is that they can look at their phone and it will provide all of the visuals and all of the sounds so they can just be passive and enjoy it. Sometimes pressing buttons, of course.
Then they come to school, what is school? School is when we want an active brain, not a passive brain.
We want to be able as a teacher to say, “Remember yesterday this was over here on the sideboard?” but the students say, “There’s nothing on the sideboard today.”
In other words, if you don’t provide the visuals, they have a hard time understanding what’s going on.
So if I may, we’re teaching manners folks, we’re teaching manners.
If you want to understand the students in front of you, take away two fingers representing almost the two years that they weren’t in school. Let’s say you teach fifth grade — you really are working with the emotional maturity of a third-grader. 10th grade would be the emotional maturity of an eighth-grader.
So if I may, don’t change your standards, but make sure you’re patient getting there.
Now, why didn’t we talk about this hat with these little white things on there?
Actually what they are, and this is from a good friend of mine, Robin Rose, who says, “Use Q-tips to remind yourself of a difficult day.” In the case of education, a difficult year.
What is a Q-tip? She took the letters, Q T I P and she said, “Consider that the Q-tip stands for Quit Taking It Personally.”
That’s when we get in trouble. You feel like they really are trying to insult you. No, they may be insulting a teacher, but it’s only because they haven’t been around education for a very long year and a half, and for some kids’ lifespan that is really, really big.
But Robin did something really clever, she said, “Not only do you do this way, but you can turn it over and look at the other end too. It’s another Q-tip that stands for Quietly, Take It Professionally.”
Folks, we’ve had a tough, tough 2021. Let’s make 2022, a more tolerant level.
Michael Grinder here, new year’s resolution, Q-TIP.
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