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Teachers

Teacher's messy descriptive writing lesson goes viral

Descriptive writing is important, even if you have no plans to become a bestselling novelist. When you're tasked with writing instructions for a new employee or even for the babysitter while you take a much needed night out, having a firm grasp of descriptive writing comes in handy. It only takes one time reading Amelia Bedelia to see why accurately describing things can make things a little easier.

Kay Sloan is a first and second grade looping teacher, meaning she stays with the same students through both grades. Recently she gave the kids a descriptive writing assignment where they needed to tell her how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. To demonstrate how well they did on their descriptive writing, Sloan used their assignment as directions. But instead of inferring what the students meant and filling in the blanks with her own knowledge, she made the sandwiches as literally as possible following the descriptions given.

Peanut Butter And Jelly GIF by EvaGiphy

It was immediately clear to the students that she was making the sandwich wrong. The first paper must've read to get bread, put jelly on one side and peanut butter on the other side because Sloan takes an unopened loaf of bread, globs jelly on top of the plastic wrapping then flips the unopened loaf over to smear peanut butter on the other side. Shouts and giggles can be heard while the teacher tries to keep it together.

In a later clip she's smearing the sandwich fillings on her arms as the kids squeal in the background. At this point it's probably safe to say that the children likely think their teacher as essentially lost her mind. Surely there's a student watching this occur wondering if they should go get another adult.

journey of allen strange nicksplat GIFGiphy

Of course she explains what she's doing before she starts just slopping jelly all over the nearest desk but it still doesn't stop her students from being confused. One paper simply says "you get bread. You get peanut butter and you get jelly." There were no further instructions so she stood with all the ingredients in her arms asking if she succeeded in making a sandwich.

While still sporting her peanut butter and jelly covered arms, she brings home the lesson, "so we just did a whole lesson on adding detail to our writing. Do we understand why you have to have detail? Did anybody ever mention a plate or a knife? Did we even use these? All I did was exactly what you told me to do. So do we see how important it is to include all of the correct steps?"

That's certainly one way to get a lesson to stick, quite literally. Commenters love the teacher's dedication to the lesson, with one writing, "THIS. IS. A. TEACHER. They truly don’t pay you enough."

Another praises, "Honey you taught the heck out of that lesson!! They’ll never forget the details that are necessary for descriptive writing!!"

"Descriptive writing! They’ll Remeber this for sure!!! Success!" someone else says.

Episode 14 Terri Mackleberry GIF by The SimpsonsGiphy

"Imagine those kids going home and trying to explain this to their parents," another commenter laughs.

"I work in management at an assembly plant. We did this same exercise to demonstrate the importance of details in each job instruction sheet. A room full of adults all had these same reactions lmao" someone else chimes in.

"This is actually a great way to teach kids about writing code. Computers are just electronic Amelia Bedelia," one person shares.

It takes a village, as they say.

People who work with children—teachers, coaches, mentors—are often beloved by the kids they serve, especially if they're good at what they do. Those caring adult relationships are important in a child's life, but they can also lead to some awkward situations as kids learn appropriate ways to show affection to different people. A baby might cover their mother's face with slobbery kisses, but other adults may not appreciate that very much. As kids grow, they learn what's okay and not okay, not just from their parents but from the village of adults in their lives as well.

A perfect example of what that looks like was shared in a video showing a swim instructor at the end of a swim lesson with a toddler who hugged him and then went in for a kiss. The hug was expected and welcome—"Thank you, Mila. I love Mila hugs!" the swim coach said. But when she started to go in for a kiss, he immediately pulled back, gently saying, "No, no kissy. No kissy 'cause I'm coach. You only kiss Mommy and Daddy, okay?"

The little girl looked a bit dejected and started to cry, and he quickly gave her an acceptable alternative. "Okay, hey! High five!" he said, while holding up his hand. "High five 'cause we're all done!" She calmed right down, gave him a high five, and then he moved on to clean-up time.

Watch:



His expression at the end of the video says it all—he knew that was a teachable moment that could have gone very wrong, but he handled it with clear professionalism and toddler-friendly expertise. People loved seeing such a great example:

"So sweet... I sometimes have young clients who want to give kisses and it's so cute but you do have to tell them "no" because it's an important boundary to learn. Not everyone wants kisses!"

"On top of knowing not to do it to other people, it also teaches them for themselves that other people shouldn’t be just giving them kisses."

"The kid is absolutely adorable but that coach is on another level. Creating the boundaries while keeping it cool and recording the whole thing so the parents are extremely comfortable. Dude is setting a hell of example."

"It sounds like he's got a good balance between encouraging her growth and setting appropriate boundaries. Kids can be incredibly affectionate, and it's important to gently guide them in understanding what's suitable."

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"I also think it’s important for the parents’ comfort that a grown man swimming with their young girl isn’t overstepping boundaries/being predatory. From the outside looking in, it’s hard to know for sure when something is innocent or not. It’s better to just stay away from those situations as a whole."

"The little girls I used to babysit always tried to give me kisses (they were between 2-5) and I had to tell them that I’m not related to you, so you can’t kiss me. You can hi-five or hug me, but no kisses! They still give me running tackle hugs when they see me!"

A few commenters pointed out that some cultures see kissing as totally acceptable, as it's frequently used as a friendly greeting for people of all ages and genders. But even in those cultures, boundaries based on relationships and contexts are important to learn, and it's helpful when adults help teach those lessons so it doesn't all fall on the parents.

Well done, Coach. Thanks for giving us all such a fabulous example to follow.

This article originally appeared in January

A hand coming through a blue wall holding a boomerang.

You might have never heard the term “boomerasking” until now, but you’ve almost certainly experienced it…and might have even done it yourself. And no, this has nothing to do with boomers asking why folks can’t pick themselves up by the bootstraps. In fact, this conversation faux pas can be committed by any age group.

Boomerasking is when someone asks a question, only to bring the focus back onto themselves, ala a boomerang.

Example: you ask “how was your day?” to a friend. Your friend responds, “fine, I got some deals at Costco,” and you reply, “well my day was great, I found $100 on the sidewalk, and someone complimented my new shoes!”

Essentially, you didn’t pose the question to really listen to your friend’s answer, but rather to talk about yourself. That’s boomerasking in a nutshell.

boomerasking, conversation tips, social skills, how to talk to people, psychological studyTwo people talking.Photo credit: Canva

But according to new research from the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, there’s a bit more to glean from this. For starters, researchers broke boomerasking down into three categories:

  • “Ask-bragging” - when someone asks a question only so that they can one-up the answerer and brag about themselves
  • “Ask-complaining” - when someone asks a question for the sole purpose of venting their story of a negative experience onto who they asked
  • “Ask-sharing” - when someone asks a question followed by sharing something neutral that probably only the asker finds interesting, i.e. weird dream

The study also found that most participants admitted they had both experienced boomerasking and had been guilty of it themselves, so it’s likely that we’ve all done our fair share of asking only to share a bit about ourselves.


And granted, this impulse isn’t completely self-serving. Researchers noted that really, it’s simply the result of two conflicting natural human desires: one, to be responsive to others, and the other, to share individual experiences. They also shared that some participants thought prefacing a long conversation about themselves with a question posed to another person was the considerate way of making conversation feel more balanced, since it’s not entirely about them.

boomerasking, conversation tips, social skills, how to talk to people, psychological studymedia1.giphy.com

In all these cases, boomerasking backfires, and instead only makes the question asked seem insincere, according to the study. To combat this urge, researchers suggest two main things:

1. Ask questions that you are unable to answer yourself, which prevents the possibility of boomerasking, because you have nothing to contribute.

2 Use responsive listening techniques, with verbal cues like affirmation, validation, and repeating and/or reformulating what a partner has said. You can still ask questions, just make sure not to shift the focus away from the other person.

Healthy conversations, which are vital to us all, require a bit of give-and-take. Plus, appearing polite doesn’t have nearly as much weight as showing genuine interest in someone else. So the next time you find yourself wanting to share something, maybe just be clear about that. And if you do ask someone about their day, listen.

Teachers

Merit-based pay for teachers is a ridiculously absurd idea, and insulting to boot

The idea that schools should be run like businesses fundamentally misses the goal of education.

Education isn't a business, and teachers don't need merit-based incentives to do their best work.

In the ongoing question of how to educate the masses in the modern age, some ideas are worthy of serious consideration and some are not. Merit-based pay for teachers falls in the "not" category.

Entrepreneur and previous presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy has been making the rounds on news programs advocating for merit-based pay for teachers. Ramaswamy claims that "pay for performance" is what businesses in the private sector do, and says, "There's no reason we shouldn't be running our public schools in the same way."

Oh yes, there are many reasons why we shouldn't be running our public schools this way.

1. Things that are not businesses should not be run like a business

Businesses are businesses. Governments are governments. Schools are schools. The idea of of running any of those things like any of the others is just silly, no matter which way you try to do it. Imagine saying a business should be run like a school or a government. Makes no sense, right? Having been both a teacher and a business owner, I can tell you that educating children and running a business are night and day endeavors, and what applies to one has nothing to do with the other.

The goal of a business is to make money by providing consumers a product or a service. The more money you make, the more successful your business is. That's a pretty simple equation with simple definitions. The goal of a school is to make sure that children and teens gain the knowledge and skills they need to enter the adult world and be a functioning, contributing member of a society.

But what does that entail? And what does "educate" even mean? Who decides what skills and knowledge are necessary for the masses to have, and how do we go about making sure each child and teen learns those things? These are questions education specialists have been asking for centuries, and the answers aren't cut and dry. Education itself is complicated, and measuring education is even more so.

2. Measuring "merit" and "performance" of teachers is incredibly complex

Let's say we were going to go ahead with merit pay for teachers. How do we measure it? How do we determine what makes someone a high-performing teacher vs. a low-performing teacher?

In a business, we have Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)—measurable things we keep track of to see how we're doing. A KPI might be a quota or a percentage of growth or something else numerical that can be put into a spreadsheet and charted to see performance or progress.

What kind of KPIs would teachers have? Number of lesson plans? That's going to vary by teacher and subject. Number of hours spent teaching? That's already predetermined. Quality of teaching? Based on whose methodology or subjective perspective?

We'd have to use measurements such as student test scores, grades, or other assessments to which we try to assign numbers, which are already controversial in and of themselves. Tying teacher "merit" to those student scores is inherently problematic for several reasons.

3. It ignores inherent advantages and disadvantages in different schools and districts

Tying teacher pay to student outcomes assumes a good teacher = good student test scores/grades and bad teacher = poor student test scores/grades. But people who actually have experience teaching hundreds or thousands of kids will tell you that's not how the math works out. There are incredible teachers who bend over backward for their students and pour their entire heart into teaching whose students struggle to perform well on tests or get good grades. And there are teachers who don't have to make a big effort because they work in wealthy districts where parent involvement and resources means students will almost assuredly score well on tests regardless of the quality of teaching.

Schools and school districts vary by degrees that would probably shock most Americans if they saw the discrepancies. It is patently unfair to reward teachers who live and work in districts where students have every advantage, from the latest technology to private tutors, and punish those who work in districts where families struggle just to put food on the table and students have to navigate the perils of poverty while trying to learn.

teaching, classroom, teachers, merit pay for teachersEducation is as much an art as a science.Photo credit: Canva

How to best measure student outcomes is already a big question mark in education. Tying them to teacher pay as a measurement of "merit" just adds another unnecessary layer of complexity to it.

4. It incentivizes the abandonment of disadvantaged students

If you're a teacher and your pay is tied directly to student outcomes, where are you going to want to teach? In a school district in a wealthy district where parents have the means to pay for tutors, high property taxes ensure schools are well-funded, and kids have plenty to eat? Or a school district where kids come to school hungry, parents may not be as engaged, and schools struggle to get the resources they need? Which student outcomes are going to mean a better paycheck for you as a teacher?

Merit-based pay means well-off school districts with higher student scores will get more teacher applicants, and can therefore be more selective, and will therefore perpetuate high student outcomes even more.

5. It incentivizes 'teaching to the test' and discourages other learning

Some student learning is easily measurable with a standardized test and some is not. Math? That's easy to measure. Rote memorization of facts? Sure, test it. But how well a student understands historical implications or grasps lessons learned through literature studies or are able to appreciate a work of art or can apply what they've learned to real-world situations? Those things are a lot harder to standardize or measure. Teaching is an art and a science, and teachers know that learning growth is neither a linear process nor a purely numerical one. There's so much progress that teachers can see that a test can't measure what gets lost when test score "outcomes" are overemphasized.

And what about grades? For many subjects, grades are subjective, so if teacher pay is tied to grade improvements, that's just asking for grades to be even more subjective. Even if merit-based pay for teachers resulted in improved test scores or grade measurements on paper, that doesn't mean the quality of teaching or education has actually gone up. It just means the focus has shifted to measurable learning, often to the detriment of equally important learning that's harder to measure.

Ramaswamy has said that merit measurement would also include things like parent feedback and peer assessments. But those kinds of assessments are wildly subjective and rife with gaming potential.

6. It's insulting to the majority of teachers who are already doing their best

There will always be teachers who are willing to work in lower income districts because they love kids and they love teaching and they're doing it for the good of humankind. In fact, I'd say most teachers fall into the category of doing it for the love of the work, which is also why merit-based pay is ridiculous. The merit-based pay idea is based on an assumption that most teachers aren't already doing their best. Teachers want to be paid what their work is worth, not compete for who gets better pay based on measurements they only have so much control over. The idea that throngs of teachers are just phoning it in, and that they'd only work harder or perform better if there were some kind of merit-based incentive to do so, is insulting.


I'm not claiming to have all the answers to improving education in the United States, but the idea that educator performance is the primary problem is a claim made by people who have never set foot in a classroom as a teacher. There are lots of solutions that can and should be tried, but merit-based pay for teachers isn't one of them.