Confessions of a Grandma

Some people are natural born teachers.  Some people have to learn the skills.  Others should just plain not bother.  I suppose that is true for any endeavor in life. I had to learn and it took me a while to come into my own as a teacher.  Mostly, I was just too naïve for the profession, especially early on. I do remember this incident from early in my career, though, when I thought I really had it down. I was a high school special education teacher in a small school.  I had a motley band of little Calvins to guide.  I was also one of those peripatetic types, always walking around.  Well, you kind of had to be with this particular group.  A little distance was a lot of leeway for those kids. So one day, we were (if I recall correctly) doing a review for a history test that they would be taking in a day or two.  I had a study guide and I was really into it.  Also, I noticed that I seemed to have the rapt attention of the student...

Sally of Retired English Teacher  had a very nice post about meeting a former student.  It's a good reminder to be nice to people. Now, the sad part is that she ran into the former student in a hospital emergency room after suffering from a bout of rapid heart rate that lasted too long.  I hope she is recovered nicely from that and continues to recover from a bad knock to her noggin in January. Her post did remind me, though. that I have had some experience with tachycardia.  My incident happened while I was in class with a small group of high school students.  I recall that I was standing at the chalk board and that I dropped a piece of chalk on the floor.  I bent over to retrieve it, and when I stood back up again I could feel my heart start to race.  I took a deep breath and tried to work my way through this, but it didn't work.  One of the students jumped up asking, "What's wrong?  What's wrong with you?"  (I remember...

A post about teaching social norms by Retired English Teacher  reminded me about the "teacher look." (not me!) For me it is all in the cock of the right eyebrow, the slight degree of narrowing the left eye, and the proper amount of pursing of the lips.  I had it down long before I was teaching, because my younger brothers used to say, "Oh, no, she's giving us the eyebrow,"  when I was being displeased with their shenanigans as kids.  That look earned me those "smoker mouth" wrinkled lips without the smoking, but say what will, the teacher look is effective communication. Now, when we were working, we got in the habit of taking a winter vacation to a warm spot--most often the Bahamas.  This involved a flight from Burlington to Pittsburgh to West Palm Beach to Marsh Harbour.  Since we travelled during school vacation, there were always lots of families with young children on at least the first leg.  While waiting for boarding, Mike got...