Chances are, if you’ve been in the education game for a while, you’ve seen this TED Talk by Rita Pierson. I’ve seen it half a dozen times now, but it was brought back to mind this past week when a presenter for a professional development session my school attended share it again and I was watching people who’d never seen it before watch it for the first time.
The message Rita sends is so important and always a timely reminder of why we’ve chosen to become educators, even when sometimes it seems like the hardest job.
Admittedly, this year, my job has become more challenging, both from all the different leadership roles I’ve taken on and also because I have an interesting group of students – who I love and adore but also require a different kind style of teaching than I’ve used in the past.
Since it’s been a while from the last time I posted here on the blog, I wanted to share the video and one of my takeaways from watching it again, this time, that I’m planning on applying in my room from the upcoming week.
When Rita talks about her student who got 2 questions right on a test, she mentioned placing a big +2 on their paper instead of the score out of whatever number of questions. I love the way this reframes the results of students for them, focusing on their positive. As teachers, we’ll always value the mistakes and misunderstandings of students as a way to future guide our teaching and instruction, but it’s also so important to value the successes, no matter how small, because you never know the impact this will have on children.
Especially children who struggle in school.