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Day #116- Heavy Armor


Dear Authoritative Teacher,

When I was in college, one of my education professors gave me the advice to not smile until Christmas. “You can always loosen up but you can’t tighten up,” he would say while contorting his bushy, gray eyebrows. In retrospect, I should have taken him more seriously, but it was hard when his overgrown eyebrows reminded me of a deformed caterpillar.

At the end of my education program, they made me develop a behavior plan where I had to outline the rules I wanted to establish in my classroom. It felt like a trick, like they knew all the rules I should have on my list but were just waiting to see if I would pick the right ones. I desperately struggled with this assignment. I think I innately knew I was most definitely going to smile before Christmas, and there was no way to predict what rules I would need before I ever met my first students. Boy, was I right. Who would have ever guessed that one of the rules I needed to add to the list was, “Do not bring a family size box of Captain Crunch cereal to class and try to fake me out by telling me it is a pencil box”?

I don’t profess to be an expert at classroom management. Let’s not forget I once had a girl hide a cat in her jacket for nearly 50 minutes, but I do know the recipe for a disaster is trying to pretend you are someone you’re not.

I was 23 years old when I first started teaching. I taught 10th grade English at a school that was— how shall I put it nicely— not the most ideal behavioral situation.

My classroom was right, smack dab between two veteran English teachers. After a combined 52 years of teaching, they both had excellent classroom management. I did not.


One day I remember listening outside each teacher’s door to see what they were doing that I wasn’t. Surely, they were smiling before Christmas too.


As I was humbly waiting to locate the holy grail of classroom management, I, ironically, found it outside the door in an internal voice that quietly whispered, “Don’t try to fight your battle wearing someone else’s armor.”


My classroom management did not magically improve that day, but that day, I did decide I was going to keep smiling regardless of what month it was. I also decided I was going to be myself regardless of what some bushy-browed professor thought.

And in the words of Robert Frost, “Oh the difference…”


If your armor is feeling a little heavy today, you might want to ask yourself the same question I did that day, “Am I wearing the right gear for the battle I am facing?”


-CDB


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