Listen
To Your Heart
MIINA
HÄRMA GYMNASIUM
TARTU,
ESTONIA
Subjects
taught currently: English- Forms 6-12 (aged 12-18)
Grades taught in the past: Forms 7-12 (aged 13-18), adults
Children
tend to copy the behavior of the people they admire. Most often they choose
their parents to be
their role models. However, what happens if parents fail to be good role
models for their children? Furthermore, in that case what is the role of the
teacher?
Recently,
I asked two different groups of 15 students (aged 13-14) to answer the
following question: what should a teacher do if s/he notices that a child is
apparently having problems at home? Here are some of the students’ answers.
Oliver suggested that s/he should buy the child a candy.
Hannes was of the opinion that s/he should talk to the student. He
thought that if the child does not want to talk to an adult about his/her
problem, the teacher should ask the student’s best friend to talk to him and
find a solution. Kaarin said,” The teacher should give the student less
homework to do.” One student, Janek, was rather skeptical
“ It’s the child’s problem. The teacher cannot do anything to
help the child. When the teacher talks to the parents, the parents will
probably be mad at their child for approaching the teacher with the family
matters.” Maarika, “I think that teachers should not worry about the
children’s problems because they have their own problems to think about.”
Many students suggested consulting the school psychologist. However,
Rein was definitely against the idea of consulting a specialist,” I would
never talk to a teacher about my problems at home. I would not even go to the
psychologist because of my problems.”
I
was quite relieved to read the answers of another group (aged 12-13). These
students, however, sounded more positive as to the teacher’s possible role
in helping the students to get over the difficulties. Most students in the
group of 15 were of the opinion that the teacher should try and make the child
happy. Paula suggested that the teacher should take the child outside and walk
with him for a while. Marta also
pointed out that the teacher should talk to him/her, however, if s/he does not
want to talk about it, the teacher should leave him/her alone. Besides that,
the children were of the opinion that the teacher should not ask the child at
the lessons, s/he should be especially careful not to ask the child any
questions about his/her family. Mari
said, “ The teacher should be
very careful not to hurt him/her any more. The teacher should go outside with
the students and try to make them feel happy.” Erkki thought that the
teacher should give the depressed child a candy and send him/her home.
We
cannot but agree with the children about the idea that the parents’ most
essential task is to provide their children a happy, relaxed and safe home.
According to Earl Wilson, “A home should not definitely be the place where
part of the family waits till the rest of the family brings the car back”.
According to the children’s answers, if a child has a problem, the
teacher’s first task is to make the child feel good, happy and safe again.
As we know from our own experience, it is very difficult both for an adult and
a child to concentrate if s/he is unhappy, distressed, frightened. So, in case
the child has lost trust in his/her parents, it is the teacher’s duty to
rebuild his trust in grown-ups and to make them feel safe, loved and important
again.
Parents
are expected to teach their children to plan their time – for an adolescent
it is sometimes very difficult to decide which task to do first. However, what
happens if the parents involved are incapable of managing their own lives, not
to speak about training their children to plan their activities. Who should
then take over the role of the child’s parents? Some children are happy to
have the most loving and caring grandparents or elderly neighbors who are fond
of children and who are willing to spend time listening to the adolescents,
giving them advice and teaching them to distinguish between right and wrong.
These children can develop relatively happy personalities even in case their
parents fail as role models. However, there are children who have been
neglected both by their parents and grandparents. That is where the teacher
has to show the child his/her support, understanding and love. And why not
follow my students’ advice and take the child for a walk outside and give
him/her a candy. Sometimes it is enough to talk about something pleasant to
make the child forget about his/her problems and feel happy and loved again.
Having done so – with the child happy and calm, we can return to the
textbook again.
Children
– much more than adults - are willing to be noticed and to do well at
school. However, what happens if they fail? At school, we can often see that
it is the children who are weak at some subjects who tend to ask for attention
by breaking the elementary rules of conduct in class – talking to the desk
mate during independent work being just one example. According to the recent
research in magnetic resonance imaging, the emotional instability and
moodiness in teenagers is mainly caused by the immaturity of the brain.
On
26 April 2002 the world was shocked by the atrocious news about Robert
Steinhauser, 19, killing 16 people, after he had been expelled from the Johann
Gutenberg School at Erfurt, eastern Germany.
The alleged reason for the killings was the fact that he had been
expelled from school last February for forging absentee excuse notes. It was
only thanks to his teacher, Rainer Heise, who approached the murderer with
gentle words, that further killings were avoided. Why did the teenage murderer
decide to end the lives of his peers and teachers? What if the teacher had not
been able to talk the teenage murderer into stopping the massacre? In
Estonian, there is an old saying - a kind word is likely to win cruelty. Thank
God there was a teacher on the spot who was able to find the right words to
stop Robert Steinhauser.
According
to Robert Steinhauser’s peers, he had boasted about becoming famous one day.
If so, the school shooting was his way of gaining attention. Some neurologists
are of the opinion that the neurological switches in a child are set already
at the time while the child is still in his mother’s womb. Shifts in
prenatal hormones are also said to affect mental skills in ways that may
become apparent later in the child’s life. Robert Steinhauser’s parents
were separated; he grew up with his mother. Do the reasons that triggered the
violent act lie in his childhood? What could have been done to avoid the
atrocities from happening? The answers to the above questions are still to be
found. Unfortunately, for the 16 people who were killed in the massacre, these
answers come too late anyway.
In
today’s Estonia, during the period of transmission from the post-socialist
into the capitalist society, we can notice clear signs of severe
stratification anywhere around us. In the socialist era, most children were
brought up in the more or less same (poor) conditions. Nowadays, some children
have wonderful opportunities to practice their hobbies and develop their
skills. On the other hand, there are the others whose parents are not so well
off, thus not being able to provide their children with an opportunity to go
in for thrilling but expensive sports or to travel to the Canary Islands.
Besides, in the harsh competition between different companies it often happens
that the parents are too busy at work to spend time with their children or
even listen or talk to them. Here,
it is the teacher’s task to notice the child and talk to him.
A
teacher is expected to be understanding, kind, willing to listen and last but
not least – a teacher is expected to be good at his/her subject. So,
teachers have to develop constantly their knowledge of their subjects. We have
to train our brains and teach the children to train theirs – that is
necessary to lay the neural foundations that
will serve them for the rest of their lives. I remember from my childhood –
in the 1960s- that children were told to finish all the activities they had
once started. To try and drop different activities after losing interest in
them was not considered a proper thing to do. Nowadays, scientists suggest
that a child should do a lot of different things as a teenager to hard-wire
his brain for different activities. It is up to the child if he wants to
become good at sports, playing music, doing mathematics or just sitting
around. Here, the teacher’s
task is to help the child to find healthy sources of stimulation –
participation in a school play or football team might provide enough
excitement for a child. If a child finds healthy excitement in life, he will
not have to turn to alcohol or drugs – both of which are especially
dangerous to teenagers by permanently altering the balance of chemicals in
their brains.
If
a child is disappointed in an adult, it is our task to build up her trust in
grownups again. However, when a child is disappointed in one adult he might
not be willing to talk to another grownup either. In that case, it may prove
useful to involve an older student and ask him to approach the child and try
to talk about his problems. It is easier for a child to speak about his
problems to someone of nearly his age. Here again, our task is to try to help
the child see the happier side of life and find solutions to his problems.
Both
children and parents expect a lot from the teacher, who is under immense
pressure – he has to be clever and well-educated, he is supposed to remain
kind, relaxed and understanding no matter what happens. However, a teacher is
just a human being with his ups and downs. I remember the time five years ago
– I had just returned from the funeral – my classmate had died of cancer
at the early age of 39. And then, there were still the lessons to give, the
knowledge to share and the problems to handle. As we all know, the teacher’s
profession calls for a lot of energy. Children seem to perceive extremely well
when we are exhausted and then they subconsciously tend to cause much more
trouble than usual. I still remember the feeling – being depressed after the
sad event I kept repeating myself: I have to stay calm and I must stay in
control. Finally, the very long forty-five minutes were over. However, I do
realize that under these circumstances I could have very easily reacted in the
wrong way.
Both
parents and teachers need a lot of patience until the child grows up. It has
been said that a teenager is the cleverest person in the world (at least that
is what he thinks). Here we can once more refer to Mark Twain who has said,
“When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly
stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was
astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.”
So, we have to do our best to be good role models for youngsters. When
we do see some of our peers fail as role models, it is our task to try and
fill in the gap – it is our task to be there for the child if s/he needs
someone’s shoulder to cry on or to share his/her joy or sorrow. You just
have to listen to your heart to do your job.
Questions
Regarding the Required Reading
Q1—Comment on the 6-year-old with a telescope and his interest in abstract ideas. How unusual was he? Have you encountered students with similar focus and reasoning abilities? Discuss.
Children,
as a rule, are inventive and show inherent curiosity. It often happens that
the youngest children are the ones who convey the smartest ideas. In this
sense, the child with the telescope was another reminder of the fact that
teaching really is a two-way process.
Q2—Were
you surprised to read that young children may be “ethically introspective
citizens”? Discuss.
As
a teacher of young children, I was definitely not surprised. Children are
basically good when they are born. It is mostly due to their surroundings and
upbringing that some of them change for the worse.
Q3—Do
you agree that morality can be taught in all kinds of classes.
Give examples from experience.
Morality
can be taught everywhere to everyone. At school, morality is taught both
during and outside the lessons. It is always more fruitful to teach by
providing a good example than by lecturing. Here, a teacher’s role is most
significant – it is in our power to influence a huge amount of young people
by developing our own personality and becoming better citizens.
Q4—What
was meant by the phrase encountered in you required reading:
“We are all moral witnesses”?
Describe an instance in the classroom when you were a good moral
witness.
It
means that you must listen to your heart while making essential decisions that
affect other people. I remember a group of student’s aged 13. One day a new
boy joined the group. Unfortunately, he had problems with pronunciation and
spelling. In some groups there are students who tend to “manage” the rest
of the group
– by ridiculing the ones who are different. In this group some of the
students giggled at the mistakes made by the newcomer. To save the situation,
I had to rearrange the group and start another activity. The next task was
reading practice. We divided the group into pairs and started to read the
text. In each group one of the students played the role of a teacher – s/he
corrected the mistakes and the other one was the student. Then we changed the
parts. Thus, both students – the one who was good at English and the other
who tended to make mistakes could play the role of the teacher. By doing so,
the students who did better at English had an opportunity to share their
knowledge by playing the role of a teacher. Each student had an opportunity to
play the teacher’s part. So, there were no hurt feelings.
Q5—Define
courage. Tell of a youngster who
has had the courage to stand up for his/her beliefs/values.
Courage
is a person’s ability to remain brave and stand out for his beliefs even
though such behaviour may bring about trouble.
It
happened at an English lesson a few years ago. I was a young teacher at the
local high school. Having received the marked test, one of the students stood
up and said that he insisted on having a lower grade – just like his desk
mate had received for the same number of mistakes. Very much embarrassed, I
asked the student for an explanation. As a rule, the students were expected to
write “big” tests in special test-books. So, he told me that I had
promised to give a lower grade to the students who had left the test books at
home and written the tests on sheets of paper. I really admired the
student’s courage – he risked getting a lower grade. I think it was fair
to change the grade – for the higher.
Q6—Comment
on the discussion on Courage that took place during a 4th grade
history lesson, as outlined in the required reading.
Share an experience where your class spontaneously engaged in a moral
analysis.
Language
lessons provide us with an opportunity to have discussions on a great variety
of topics – starting from books and reading, film and theatre up to drinking
and driving. Sometimes it is a wonderful way of starting the lesson – giving
the students a topic to discuss and asking each pair to give a short
presentation to the class, providing their opinions of the issue. More often
than not, students raise questions for discussion. A few years ago, one of our
students had lost his sister in a car accident. He had been missing classes
for a while, when his classmate asked the following question - what can we do
to console someone in mourning. Each pair provided different valuable pieces
of advice to his peers.
Q7—How
is a good person described at the end of the required reading involving A
Bronx Tale?
A
good person takes the feelings of other people into consideration while making
essential decisions. Charity begins at home. Each one of us has to do his/her
best to develop and improve as a personality. The more people do so, the
better a place the world becomes.
Q8—What
should a teacher do when she/he sees a student trying to get another student
in trouble or somehow disrupting the class?
The
teacher’s task is to react – either on the spot or after the lesson. As
for me, I am for the idea of reacting right off. It might not be a very good
idea to talk to the student in front of the class. It might have the opposite
effect – he might easily feel like a hero. I would give the class pair- or
group-work. While the rest of the students are involved in the task I would
talk to the troublemaker. It sometimes also works to rearrange the class.
Q9—The
Harry Singer Foundation pilot project, Dream Machine, White Hats and Problem
Solvers are based on the premise that students have the capacity to act
responsibly, interact with adults in the community and make mature decisions.
In light of the article by Shannon Brownlee regarding the development
of the teen brain, do you think the Foundation may be giving teens too much
credit?
It
is impossible to give anyone too much credit – be it an adult or a child. As
for the statement about teens not having the proper hardware for good judgment,
I cannot definitely agree to that. During my career at school our students
have shown superior judgment.
Q10—If
you think your students are capable, will you engage a group in one of our
pilot projects? If not, why not?
I
would feel privileged to participate in one of the Harry Singer Foundation
pilot projects. I am sure that participation in the project would benefit our
students. Most students at Miina Härma Gymnasium are intelligent and brainy,
craving for new knowledge. Learning English from Form 1 they are able and
willing to communicate in English.