OP-ED: Hints for connection from 5 decades on the road
2022 begins my 51st year as an educator, although the first few years were as a nurse teaching health education.
I was a 21-year-old new grad when my head nurse at Children’s told me the diabetic teaching nurse was ill. She handed me a shoebox containing a vial of sterile water, a vial of insulin, three syringes, gauze, alcohol, and Band-Aids and pointed me to the treatment room, where a newly diagnosed 7-year-old juvenile diabetic and his parents waited. Thus began my first teaching experience! I loved it so much that I went back to college, graduated in education, and became certified as a school nurse.
I taught my first childbirth education to adults in the mid-1970s and my first sexuality education to young people in the mid-1980s. After founding the Washington Health System Teen Outreach in 1988, my staff and I taught over a quarter million young people in 48 schools in five counties through 2013. Since 1995, we’ve trained over 15,000 teens as peer educators to teach with our professional staff.
I opened the Common Ground Teen Center in Washington in 2008; we’ve served over 3,200 unique teens in over 35,000 visits. During the 2020 lockdown, we met virtually twice a day, Monday through Friday, and ran 10 virtual summer camps. I personally logged over 1,100 teaching Zoom hours from March to July.
Teaching is my heart. These hints are for new teachers or any adult who wants to make connection.
1. Be real. Teens can sniff out fake with alacrity! Be genuine, be sincere, and be yourself.
2. Young people are smarter than many adults think. Listen and learn from them.
3. Your students are always watching you. Be aware of the example you are modeling.
4. Feed them. If you start feeding them, you will always need to feed them, but you still should. Hungry young people do not learn well.
5. Let your students make mistakes. Failure is one of the best ways to learn.
6. Admit your own mistakes. Adults are not perfect, nor should we pretend to be.
7. Plan your lessons with care – even if you’ve taught this class 100 times, it is the first time for your students.
8. Stay current. Fact check. Information changes. Be alert.
9. Be aware of trauma; it runs deep. Look for the “why” of behavior.
10. Listen to the music behind your words. Your tone matters as much if not more than your content.
11. Young people are like onions, as Shrek said about ogres. You only see the top layer until connection happens. Connection is key. It is your strongest asset.
12. Relationships are the foundation of all connection.
13. Trust is the foundation of all relationships.
14. Articulate the obvious. Tell your students how happy you are to be with them and how worthy they are.
15. Self-worth is not taught in a lecture but is dripped in daily. Take time to distribute messages of student self-worth.
16. Tell your students what you plan to teach before you teach it.
17. Tell your students what you taught after you taught it.
18. Accept your students unconditionally, as they are. Set aside personal biases (we all have them) and see each student as a person of worth.
19. Believe your students are glorious. Believe it and they will know.
20. Lead with love. Always.
21. Finally, remember you are planting seeds. You may not see the trees bear fruit, but it will happen.
Teaching is NOT about you; it is always about your students.
#TeachersRock #EachPersonIsAPersonofWorth #MyStudentsAreTheReason