Trish

Jim Collins in his book Good to Great puts forth the “stuff” of greatness in any profession – he coins the adjective humble-boldness: “A burning, passionate, obsessed ambition for the cause, for the work – not for themselves – and utterly stoic will to make good on that ambition”.

I’m calling out Trish Stevens - she’s passionate about her students. Isn’t that the “stuff” of a great teacher?  – teachers who are passionate about helping the neediest of students. We all know a student who is a “handful” - Trish has taken a very “challenging” student and found ways to affirm this student, unlock the key to this student’s behavior and gradually put the jumbled puzzle of what makes this student tick and what will help this student grow and make valuable contributions to her class.

Let’s circle back – “burning, passionate, obsessed – for the cause” –the case for Trish is for the respect and success of each of her students and most definitely one of the most challenging students she has encountered.  She uncovered ways to reach this student by

  • Highlighting his strengths for everyone to see
  • Helping him understand how he fits into the world around him - especially the classroom
  • Gets him invested in the school - joining clubs, coming to nightly school events, buying him spirit wear

Trish is not waiting for this kid to “screw up” - she’s always waiting for him to succeed. She roots for him.  She is his cheerleader. Trish is a great resource for many of us who struggle with ways to address such students.

I want to be like Trish when I grow up!

Marty

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Slice of life

Good evening  I am curious about your own writing.  Do any of you have a writing practice, such as, journaling?  Just wondering.  If I were a betting man, I’d put money on it that many of you do have a writing habit of sorts – if not now, perhaps earlier in life.  Please consider sharing a posting with us – or even on the bigger stage of Two Writing Teachers Blog. Last week I talked about the blog – Two Writing Teachers. This blog offers us the opportunity to share a piece of our own writing on pretty much any subject. You will find the means to do that under “Slice of Life” .  Just wanted to throw this out to anyone so inclined.  I’m going to push myself to post something.  Courage, right?    At any rate, my thoughts on writing focused on Heart Maps or Close to the Bone maps.  It seems to me that such a map would be beneficial for different writing responses, and most especially when we require students to write t...
Read more

Valentines Day

Carpe diem!  Happy Valentine’s Day!   Kids – and boyfriends and girlfriends– and adults who have special relationships with kids - that would be grandparents, for sure, want to show some expression of their love.   We send our cards with hearts and Xs and Os – and many of us spend a few minutes reading the sentiment inside the card – the thought needs to be a good fit.  Why not take the time to compose our own message to our Valentine?   I have been reading a fair amount about using mentor texts to teach the craft of writing.  Lucy Calkins and Katie Woodray (Wondrous Words) continually advise us to really get to know several good books – like inside and out.  What are the “tricks” of their writing?   What are the craft elements the author weaves into the writing? Writing gurus are reminding us to stop when we are reading a well written passage - “Hey look at that.  Look at how she wrote that!”  Try to fig...
Read more

Mother's day

Here’s an idea -  Mother’s Day comes in this final month and all of us can conjure up how our students might write a message to probably the most important audience in their live – their Mom. I think most kids can hang their writing hats on the following idea. The Important Book by Margaret Wise Brown could be used as a mentor text to show students how authors like Brown developed a message and to create a written Mother’s Day message for their own mothers.   Brown selects several mundane important things/events and builds the case for why each is important.  She opens giving a strong reason explaining why the thing/event is important. She continues building a case for its importance with several other reasons.  And she ends each description with the same sentence as the first.    Listen to the oral reading , and you will see and hear the effectiveness of the message that is set in a poetic rhythm. I have given you a verse using Margaret Wise Brown...
Read more