EN Teaching

For almost 13 years tweens and teens have been asking me questions. Usually they’re having problems with friends, former friends, mean kids… You get the picture. Their sadness and confusion gets to me. Sometimes I tear up at the keyboard. Sometimes I yell in frustration. They don’t understand why a friend would treat them this way. I don’t get it either. But I try my best to help by telling them what they can do to improve the situation.

That’s a tall order because well, an email is just an email. It isn’t a hug. It’s not someone who knows you standing close by, listening and nodding in sympathy. Giving kids the real help they need to deal effectively with friendship challenges involves real teaching time. That’s why whenever a school invites me to do a student presentation I’m there in a flash.

I love teaching kids about self-esteem, the brain and the human stress response, decision-making, conflict resolution, peer approval addiction, and understanding the difference between real friends vs. the other kind. read more »

One of the memories we have as kids is playing with puzzle games or brain teasers which they are also known as with many different varieties around such as the classic maze with a ball bearing to the extremely popular Sudoku.

All of these brain teasers give kids the opportunity to stimulate their brain cells and develops their cognitive thinking skills which can reflect to a positive nature throughout their life. As mentioned there are many different types of these brain puzzles available such as the following – read more »

Perspective is such a wonderful thing in many ways. It allows us to connect with others and allows people to come to a place of understanding, one to another. Sometimes that means agreement, too, but not always. Nevertheless, as educators, it is important to understand that patience is a key in training our students to think, learn, and grow in wisdom. Over time, our students may learn to appreciate and understand our perspective on things, and value what we have given them, but we must be consistent to train and educate our students whether or not we see their immediate response. Winnie the Pooh may have summed this up most accurately when he said, “If the person you are talking to doesn’t appear to be listening, be patient. It may simply be that he has a small piece of fluff in his ear.”

Simple words, but deep truth. Harder still, though to act upon as teachers and educators. But if we can put aside our need to get credit, or our need to get anything at all out of it, then we can be free to continue doing what we are doing, faithfully, and change the lives of our students along the way. Clearly it’s nice to have positive feedback, and we all perform better with it, but if we don’t get it, does it change our obligation as educators? No. We are still called to be effective conveyors of information, whether it is in teaching concepts or teaching skills, we are challenged to do our jobs well.

To do that, we must put aside our own need for attention. There is an old phrase about teaching being a thankless job, and yet many, many students in colleges are still majoring in Education. Why? If the field is so thankless, you would imagine that Education majors would be dwindling. They’re not, and so I would say that there is still an intrinsic value in educating others that is its own reward. We must hang on for that.

When I was in college, I wrote my parents a note. I described how I had come to value their years of parenting, guiding me on the right path, allowing me to learn solid skills, giving me strong educational opportunities, etc. It was a rather long and “flowery” letter that let them know that I was beginning to see things from their perspective. It had only taken me about twenty years to get there. Upon getting my letter, my dad called me up, and in his best witty voice, he said, “Well, you’re right on time with this!”

I was shocked and almost hurt that he didn’t see the deep meaning in my letter, but that was the point, wasn’t it? He did see the value in my letter because he had invested the time and energy over the last twenty years in creating that value.

Education is much like parenting in this way. We must create the value over time, being patient and steady, and one day, right on time, our students will come to understand the benefits of what they have gained, from our perspective!

We all know that St. Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland, and St. Patrick, as much as the Irish flag is, is identified with the country. St. Patrick, or St. Paddy as he is sometimes referred to, enjoys the fierce devotion of the Irish around the globe. St. Patrick was an Englishman, however. When he was a young man, he was captured by Irish raiders and was brought to Ireland as a slave. After six years of captivity, he was able to escape back home. He entered the priesthood, became a bishop and returned to Ireland.

A famous story about St. Patrick is about him driving away all the snakes from Ireland. This is a quite famous story, a story further fueled by the fact that there really are no snakes in Ireland today.

There are several versions to this story. There is the dramatic version with him standing atop a hill, holding his cane, ordering all the snakes in the island to leave Ireland and never to return again. The snakes all rushed into the sea and never came back.

Another version states that an old snake refused to leave the island. St. Patrick had to use cunning and wit to drive away this wise, old snake. St. Patrick brought a box and asked the snake to get in the box. The old snake would not and insisted that the box was too small. Patrick said it was the right size. To prove that the box really is small, the snake got into the box. The moment the snake got in the box, St. Patrick sealed the box and threw it into the sea.

There are a lot of stories linking St. Patrick and Ireland, but this snake-driving story is the best-known. If you ask any Irish why there are no snakes in Ireland, you’ll probably hear about how St. Patrick drove the snakes away many years ago.

The Mexican flag is a red, white and green banner with the Mexican Coat of Arms right in the center of it. The red symbolizes the blood that was shed during the battles for independence. The white symbolizes purity. The green symbolizes the earth’s fertility.

Now, the coat of arms is interesting because it consists of an eagle sitting atop a thorny cactus eating a rattlesnake. This collection of images has an equally interesting story, a story that dates back to the time of the Aztecs, before Mexico existed. The Aztecs were a nomadic people that travelled around the American continent. According to the legend, their god of war, Huitzilopochtli, informed their leader through his dream that they are supposed to stop wandering around and that they are supposed to settle in a place that was allotted for them. The god of war said that they would know the place to settle in by the marker that he will place there: yes, an eagle eating a snake perched atop a prickly pear cactus.

This picture is thick with symbolism. The eagle was a representation of the sun god Huitzilopochtli, also the god of war, who appeared to the Aztec leader. The sun and the sun god are very important to the Aztec as they call themselves the “People of the Sun.” The eagle on the Mexican flag is a golden eagle, also the official bird of Mexico.

Though the place where they saw the sign was not really suitable for human settlement back then, what with it being a swamp area surrounded by lakes, the Aztecs nevertheless went ahead and built the great city of Tenochtitlan, which is where modern day Mexico City stands.