Glennon Doyle Melton TODAY contributor
Jan. 31, 2014 at 6:57 PM ET
This post was first published on Glennon Doyle Melton's blog, Momastery, on Jan. 30. In less than a day it was shared more than 1 million times. We wanted to share it with you.
A few weeks ago, I went into Chase’s class for tutoring.
I’d
emailed Chase’s teacher one evening and said, “Chase keeps telling me
that this stuff you’re sending home is math – but I’m not sure I believe
him. Help, please.” She emailed right back and said, “No problem! I can
tutor Chase after school anytime.” And I said, “No, not him. Me. He
gets it. Help me.”
And that’s how I ended up standing at a chalkboard in an empty fifth
grade classroom staring at rows of shapes that Chase’s teacher kept
referring to as “numbers.”
Little Moon Photography
Author Glennon Doyle Melton with her family; her conversation with her son's teacher sparked this post.
I
stood a little shakily at the chalkboard while Chase’s teacher sat
behind me, perched on her desk, using a soothing voice to try to help me
understand the “new way we teach long division.” Luckily for me, I
didn’t have to unlearn much because I never really understood the “old
way we taught long division.” It took me a solid hour to complete one
problem, but l could tell that Chase’s teacher liked me anyway. She used
to work with NASA, so obviously we have a whole lot in common.
Afterwards,
we sat for a few minutes and talked about teaching children and what a
sacred trust and responsibility it is. We agreed that subjects like math
and reading are the least important things that are learned in a
classroom. We talked about shaping little hearts to become contributors
to a larger community – and we discussed our mutual dream that those
communities might be made up of individuals who are Kind and Brave above
all.
And then she told me this.
Every Friday afternoon
Chase’s teacher asks her students to take out a piece of paper and write
down the names of four children with whom they’d like to sit the
following week. The children know that these requests may or may not be
honored. She also asks the students to nominate one student whom they
believe has been an exceptional classroom citizen that week. All ballots
are privately submitted to her.
And every single Friday
afternoon, after the students go home, Chase’s teacher takes out those
slips of paper, places them in front of her and studies them. She looks
for patterns.
Who is not getting requested by anyone else?
Who doesn’t even know who to request?
Who never gets noticed enough to be nominated?
Who had a million friends last week and none this week?
You
see, Chase’s teacher is not looking for a new seating chart or
“exceptional citizens.” Chase’s teacher is looking for lonely children.
She’s looking for children who are struggling to connect with other
children. She’s identifying the little ones who are falling through the
cracks of the class’s social life. She is discovering whose gifts are
going unnoticed by their peers. And she’s pinning down — right away —
who’s being bullied and who is doing the bullying.
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