PATIENCE
The Students' Gifts and the Teachers' Role
Each student has a rainbow of gifts. A classroom of students have so many gifts that it would take considerable time to discover them all. I have found that many times I am the most enthusiastic cheerleader on this topic, and as such, have to work very hard over many week to convince students of the specific gifts. Most students have inherited these gifts from birth. Their mission in life is to discover these gifts and implement them to help others. The teacher has to be looking for these gifts within each student, and when these gifts suddenly erupt in the classroom there must be immediate positive reaction.
For most students, the daily negative responses outweigh the daily positive responses. Family, friends, and those within their sphere of influence can be quite aggressive and hurtful in many ways unknown to the offenders. As a result, the role of the teacher is to be waiting to receive and hear these golden gifts from their students. They occur in every class, but unless the teacher is prepared to see and hear them these moments will pass by unnoticed by the teacher and the students.
Students operate daily on three levels. They behave in their public life by the social code of the school and community which includes attitudes towards vocabulary, dress, food, achievement, and choice of friends. They behave in their personal life by the social code and expectations of the family which includes routines, schedules, chores, responsibilities in the house, allowance, clothes, recreation, choice of friends, study habits, and recreation. They behave in their private life on a spiritual level. This occurs when they are alone with nothing but their thoughts, prayers, feelings, dreams, and aspirations. This spiritual level is where many students want to connect with others in their public and personal lives, and when students find people who can connect on a spiritual level within their personal and public life there is a genuine feeling that life is good and full of joy, excitement, and purpose.
It is important for students to connect with their spiritual life, and the joy they feel when connecting with their best friend or friends. For many students, the struggle to accept who they are, why they are here, what is their mission, and how their gifts and talents can contribute to others is more of a challenge than the academic homework or the big game on Friday night. It is the goal of every teacher to focus on the potential of each student. Many educators feel that approximately 20-30% of high school students are actively participating in high level achievement in sports, academics, the arts, and school organizations. Do schools really care about the students who are there but are not the honor roll or honor society students? These students have parents and families paying the same taxes as the top students, but are they really being challenged and encouraged to be all that they can be as potentially B- or C- students?
Does a student have to graduate from Harvard, Yale or Princeton to be successful and have a good self-image? Can a student make mistakes in middle school or high school and rebound from these mistakes to be more productive as a result of those mistakes? How do we feel as a society about student mistakes? Are these learning opportunities from which students learn or are these embarrassments that pigeon-hole students for life in local communities? George W. Bush, in addressing the 2001 graduating class from Yale, took the time to address the average graduating student. For some reason we all think that all Yale graduates receive A or B grades all the time. We do not think of Yale graduates averaging C and D grades over four years.
The best vision I have found on this topic is that students are going to primarily affect their families, their neighborhoods and their friends. Within these spheres of influence a student may be the only musician or the only artist or the only historian or the only athlete in their family with any knowledge, experience, or success in these areas. It is not necessary to be the valedictorian of the class to have the knowledge required, but it is necessary for a student to have the experience of being successful in school as a musician, artist, historian or athlete. From these successes, the teacher and the mentor of the next generation is born. The sphere of influence may be large or small, but if this single student is the only one with the skills and information within that sphere, that student's gifts are vital to the success of the next generation of students in their specific family, community, and sphere of influence.
We all learn from different people who play different roles in our lives. Uncles, aunts, cousins, grandparents, coaches, ministers, priests, youth directors, YMCA coordinators, next door neighbors, and local government officials are joining with our schools and universities as positive as teachers and mentors. Each of these teachers and mentors as role models have the responsibility to do everything within their power and influence to help the children of each succeeding generation to discover their gifts which were given to them from birth. This is the big mission and the big challenge for every mentor and every teacher for all time in all countries and in all cultures.