Allisence: Talkin' the Talk and Walkin’ the Walk

ap•pre•ci•a•tion [uh-pree-shee-ey-shuh’n] noun 1. gratitude; thankful recognition

One of the things I really appreciate is that my school is an International Baccalaureate Candidate School, and one of the things I appreciate most about the IB Primary Years Programme is the IB Attitudes. We want our students to be global citizens who exhibit  respect, independence, confidence, tolerance, enthusiasm, curiosity, creativity, cooperation, empathy, commitment, integrity, and appreciation.

As a school, we're focusing on appreciation this November — I'm guessing because it goes along well with Thanksgiving. As I was trying to prepare an initial lesson on what appreciation is and how we go about exhibiting that attitude on a regular basis, I was struck by how little appreciation I really show.

I can honestly say that I am extremely appreciative of my students, my aides, my fellow co-workers, and the simple fact that I have a job, but I'm also extremely positive that I'm appreciative of all these things only on the inside. I'm pretty sure nobody, except those of you reading this right now, has any idea how appreciative I really am, which is really sad.

And what's more sad is the fact that one of the people I appreciate the most at my school is no longer there and I don't think I ever showed her how appreciative I really was. I'm talking about my school's (former) speech and language pathologist. She was truly an amazing service provider and one who cared not just about her students' speech and language, but the whole student. I had the extreme pleasure of working with her a significant amount because the students in my self-contained class have pretty severe speech and language impairments. She was in our room for an hour a day. My kids were essentially receiving 300 minutes of speech a week.  That's incredible!

And what's more incredible is that we were able to come up with a plan to weave academics (reading, writing, and math) into her sessions and more speech throughout the rest of our day. It was truly transdisciplinary.

And now that she's no longer at the school, I sit and I wonder if she knows how much my students and I (still) appreciate her. They made her awesome little thank you cards before she left and I was seriously tearing up as they said thank you and goodbye, but I really don't think I was all that great of an appreciation model.

This is something I really need to change; otherwise, I'd be talkin' the talk, but totally not walkin' the walk, and that's just pathetic. So I'm going to show another IB Attitude --  commitment -- and commit right here on this blog to finding a way each week to show someone I work with how much I appreciate him/her.

Week 1: I will show the new speech and language pathologist how much I appreciate her by making her a welcome sign.

Anyone want to join my appreciation campaign?

Comments

[Alysha]

That sounds like something we all need to work on. I know it is easy to start but to be able to continue it throughout your teaching career will be very rewarding. I think it's a great idea to make a welcome sign for the new speech and language pathologist. You could also have to students write/type a letter to your old speech and language pathologist and send it to her, I'm sure she misses the kids just as much as they miss her, it seems like they were both a big part of each others lives. I am going to also try and show my appreciation more, thanks for the great idea!!!

[Nicole]

To teach students, you must model the behavior yourself! I think it's great you recognized this, and you can probably use it to your advantage and work together with your students so that you can all become better at showing your appreciation and gratitude. Another awesome part of this post, is the part about how the speech teacher wove academics into speech lessons, and how you incorporated speech into academics! Learning does not happen in a vacuum, there are always multiple things being learned!

[Leighann]

I can relate to this blog post. I am a firm believer in telling people how much you appreciate them, and to do this not only in a card at the end of a semester, but in person throughout the year. I have had a similar situation to you with one of my cooperating teachers.

She was my field experience teacher, and she taught me so much about how to be a successful teacher, and how to be firm with the children while still being able to relate to them. I gave her a card at the end of my experience, and I thought that she would just know how appreciative I was for all she gave me that semester. I realized that I never took the opportunity to tell her in person all of the things I put in the card at the end of the year. The next year, she transferred to another school, and I had no way of contacting her to let her know how I am doing, and how the lessons she had taught me were helping me in my practicums and will help me in my student teaching next year.

I am going to take inspiration from you and make an effort to tell the people around me who help me and guide me how much I appreciate them personally, not waiting to give them a card at the end of the semester. Thank you for the inspiration!