Abracadabra

Today I read an article about a teacher who performs “magic” in the classroom; the kind of magic where he transforms an underachieving class of Harlem sixth graders into a class of kids who want to learn and in fact excel. After his kind of magic half his students gain entry into the elite schools in Manhattan. I was interested. Though I actually taught public school in a former life I call B.C., or before children I was not able to perform magic in the classroom. I was too busy trying to keep the kids from hurting each other but that’s another story. If I had only had a magic wand I might have been a much better teacher.

Back to Mr. Ron Clark who at this point is rather famous having a movie made about him played by Matthew Perry, appearing on Oprah and becoming Disney’s teacher of the year in 2000 (I’m not so sure I’d want that award ??). What advice does he give so that other normal teachers can become magic teachers? It isn’t complicated stuff actually, the first thing he says is that you have to make your classroom like a family. Gee, that’s pretty easy for us homeschoolers, our classroom *is* a family! He says kids also need to feel a part of their community another bell went off in my head saying, gee we live and work in our community every single day not just on weekends.

He used the novel idea to make the kids memorize every single adult’s name in the entire school and soon the cafeteria staff got to know the students and were invested in their success. He taught his students life skills like how to greet people, to look them in the face and use their names with Mr. or Mrs. I know I’ll sound so negative because we certainly don’t live in an ideal world but shouldn’t parents be teaching their own kids simple life skills like how to speak to people and how to relate to the world and how to care for themselves and others?

Well I know there are many, many kids all over the US not just in Harlem who are not taught the simple things they need to be a productive valuable person in their community, never-mind the advanced academics they’ll need to succeed. In no way would I want to belittle anything that Mr. Clark or any other public school teacher has done. Certainly he has done some serious *magic*. To Mr. Clark and the many others like him I say, you guys rock! You deserve more pay frankly but your payment comes in the form of your successful students, even though it should be reflected in your paycheck.

If you are homeschooling your kids then you’re ahead of the game and frankly you probably don’t even need a magic wand after all. You do magic every day by being with your kids and giving them what they most need, your time, your life and your financial resources . Your classroom is a family, you are part of the community daily and if you’re not you should be or you’re missing out on a great part of homeschooling, where some real magic occurs.

Mimi

This entry was posted on Friday, August 18th, 2006 at 5:59 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.