Reaching Before Teaching

Olga wrote our second and final entry on chapter 13. These
are her cousin's kids, and she said that she babysits them so
much that she feels like they're hers.

Each child comes into a classroom with his personal life story, which drastically affects how he learns and succeeds in education. One’s background, parents, stress level, and personal experience all play a vital role in his ability to learn. Reading this chapter made me realize and better understand the importance of a teacher’s job. It also taught me the concept of reaching children before attempting to teach them. As Gordon wrote in her book, “to teach children, we must first reach them” (p.194) Teachers cannot have the same expectations for every child but instead need to understand the uniqueness of each child and reach out to them with empathy. In this chapter, Gordon writes that the teacher’s job is not simply about imparting knowledge, but establishing a relationship that will promote learning.

I remember when I had just moved to America and how different and difficult everything seemed to be in the schools. Looking back to my first year, I remember my frustration at not being able to understand anything or anyone. But what I remember more is my inspiring teacher who gave me the motivation to try. She understood the difficulty in moving to a different country, trying to blend into the completely foreign culture and found enough empathy to reach out to me. During those first years, she built a relationship with me that gave me the confidence I needed to succeed. Her understanding of the importance of her job helped shape me into the person I now am.

I have been to many different orphanages in Russia, and have met many different children. All of these children have had a difficult past and as I began to work more with them, I began to understand how those past events shaped and formed their character. I began to have more empathy and tried harder to connect to them. Difficult situations made more sense to me, and resolving them did not seem to be so hard anymore. Once I understood the effects of their past, I better understood their current situations. I believe those trips to the orphanages benefitted me far more than the children, because they taught me how to reach children by accepting them as whole people, past and present.

As I currently work in a preschool, I try to learn and understand where each child comes from and why they act the way they do. We have had children that come from different foster care homes who do not understand how to deal with all of their strong emotions.  Little by little, I began to see how their actions were merely a cover for a certain feeling that they could not identify. They did not know how to properly express or deal with that particular emotion. It is very rewarding to see how the children change for the better after the continuous effort of teaching and guiding.

Reading this chapter made me realize what it means to be a good teacher and the importance of a good relationship between a teacher and his or her students. As Gordon states: “A child’s decision to learn or not often depends on his relationship with the teacher” (p. 205). As a teacher myself, I have seen the necessity of gaining a child’s respect and building a healthy relationship. Seeing the effect of this on his desire and ability to learn, I have learned to respond differently to tantrums and other negative behavior. Teachers often have one of the most profound effects on a person’s life, whether good or bad. I believe that by understanding and adapting the concepts in this chapter, a teacher can learn to be far more effective and influential. Reaching the child before attempting to teach him has proven to be a significantly more successful method than any other method.