Today is the anniversary deathday of one of my teachers. She continues to influence the way I approach teaching every day. She was a first grade teacher of 6 year old children for around 35 years. She wasn’t _my_ first grade teacher but we talked about learning and teaching all the time.

She herself never tried to reduce her very nuanced teaching philosophy down to a few “rules,” but just for fun (“fun”) tonight I tried to smash our thousands of hours of talking about classroom teaching down into just a few sentences.

• Give the children as much love as humanly possible. There’s no such thing as too much love.

• Listen carefully to them, and watch their little faces with equal care.

• Have a philosophy for scolding that’s about learning. Our work is to raise decent, caring human beings.

• Show them that you cherish their efforts to learn by sincerely replying to each and every attempt they make to learn something. Do this regardless of how many students you have, how long it takes, or how much (or little!) effort they seem to be giving.

• Prepare, prepare, prepare - and then be ready to set the preparation aside if the situation calls for you to do so. Teachers should be creative and improvisational.

• Never, ever lie to your students, about anything.

Writing it up like this, this all seems so simple. But every time I try to put these ideas into meaningful practice, I’m always failing.

R.I.P. Jeanette. I miss you.

Drittens