Tag: #students

A Loose Tooth

crop woman with bright lipstick
Photo by Rahul Pandit on Pexels.com

A scream….footsteps…I spring to my feet looking in all directions as my heartbeat increases to meet the urgency of the distress. I quickly walk to the back door of my Montessori preschool classroom. Before I get there, in rushes an assistant ushering in a frightened little one. With blood on his lower lip and tears streaming down his face, I understand at once that the previous fun of his loose tooth has turned its own corner. From fun to frightened after another boy’s elbow found his mouth while playing.

The handoff from assistant to teacher is complete and I grab a cup of cold water and ice pack . I hope to help alleviate the blood flow and even a bit of the pain. Still crying hysterically, I guide the wounded soldier into a chair all the while hearing through the sobs, “I don’t like this.” We chat briefly about how growing up is exciting and sometimes a challenge. When I hear him say once again through loud sobs and short, rapid breaths, “But I don’t like this,” my mindfulness toolbelt magically appears before my eyes.

This young man has practiced deep breathing and meditation with his classmates throughout this school year, so when I ask him to take a deep breath in, I watch him close his eyes. This alone makes me smile. Before closing mine, I ask him if he’d like us to hold hands while we breathe together. He nods, eyes still shut and I follow suit. We breathe in unison; his tears stop flowing and his breath lengthens.

Opening our eyes, I ask him if he’d like to try a new strategy to help him stay with this peaceful feeling inside. Having our breath work be such a success, he readily agrees. I teach him how to do the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), otherwise known as tapping. We go through the process together, saying things like, “Even though my tooth is falling out and I don’t like it, I am okay” and “Even though I don’t like the feeling in my mouth right now, I am safe.”

Somewhere in there… I had phoned his mother to pick him up (about 15 minutes early) and she is now at the door. In my experience, when an upset person appears calm and then sees a loved one, the floodgates start or reoccur. That’s what I’ve done in the past myself! To my surprise, this was not the case. He ran to his mom and hugged her, just holding on to his pure first love, feeling the safety of her embrace.

I’d like to think the breathing and tapping put him into such a peaceful space that he not only felt safe and okay, but truly felt it. I’m still smiling….

The Pain of Wanting to be Like Everyone Else

As a grade eight teacher, some days I’m especially reminded of the harsh world the students live in. Since I primarily work with adolescents struggling in school in some form or the other, I am pretty familiar with the many ways a student suffers on a daily, even minute to minute basis. Sometimes it pains me in such a way, I cry for them, for me, for us, for humanity.

A student’s comment caught me off guard today. As we worked on multi-step Algebra equations, we were also discussing the difficulties of Algebra in general. After saying, “This is really hard work.” The reply was, “If it’s so hard, why can everyone else do it?” My heart broke right then and there, sitting in the classroom, another crack with another student’s name to add to the roster of 30 years. We continued our chat, but I don’t think I was able to turn that student’s thoughts around. Sometimes I just hate math!!

Hug from a Student – The Irony of it All

I sit here with tears in my eyes, barely able to text these words, blurry to me, but clear to you. I want you to think…think of a moment when someone is so happy to see you, so surprised that you appeared in their presence. Got it? What a gift, right? One of the best gifts ever! I was given that gift yesterday.

Let’s go back a few days first…my husband was rewatching his video of this gift during the weekend long surprise celebration of my 50th birthday. My daughter came walking in from around a corner and I was so shocked and delighted that I was overcome with joy, so much so that I couldn’t even speak, as tears happily christened my ruddy cheeks. She flew home to Rhode Island from Key West Community College for the weekend…for me! Neither I nor my beloved will ever forget that moment. It was a gift to us both.

Yesterday, as I walked into the ice skating rink from the back entrance, my eyes were drawn to my left as I saw such an expression of joy on a familiar face. A gasp of surprise leaked from his smile and I mirrored the same feeling as I looked into that delighted grin. As I stepped forward toward him to say hello, he popped up from the bench like a jack-in-the-box, stepped toward me on his skates, looming over me like a friendly giant.

Before I knew it, he embraced me in a bear hug and lifted me off my feet, bending his back to hold the weight of me! As he set me down upon the rubber matting, our smiles had to give way to shouts of hello! Neither of us could wipe the grins off our faces as we chatted while tying up our skates, ready to step out onto the ice for some fun.

A beautiful gift, right? A former student, now at the high school after leaving grade 8 and my classroom doors six months prior, reacting without thinking, just by following his heart.

The irony you might wonder? Just recently my colleagues and I were discussing the fact that we as teachers cannot touch students for fear of any misunderstanding. It is ironic to me that so shortly after this conversation that a student did just that as a show of his happiness to see one of his teachers. It is sad that we are now in a time that human touch is frowned upon in schools, yet teachers have the daily watch over students in their care that lack this very thing. The powers that be also direct us to teach them social-emotional skills because they are so desperately needed and lacking in generations of today. So it all seems to leave us in a state of irony.

Ironic circumstances may surround me, but all I can do and have done for the past 30 years is follow my heart, just as my former student did!

I am Inspired by a Former Student Reaching Out

When I am down in the dumps, really down…I reach farther down, usually down into the bottom of a pint of ice cream, or two. I’ve admitted this recently to some friends….It’s been especially rough weeks recently…unique and unexpected happenings – and these incidents did not bring my usual workplace smile to my face!

Even today, I felt like I was kicked while I was down. Or maybe it was a punch – a sucker punch. I was not expecting it at all and am pretty sure a boxing referee would easily have determined it a TKO – a technical knock out. I didn’t fall, out cold on the floor, like Bluto after being slugged by Popeye…but it was a mental KO for sure… and strike three in three weeks.

Jodi as Bluto
(twayneking.blogspot.com)

Anyway, after I spent some time cooling down and dreaming of driving to Cumby’s, our neighborhood convenience store, for a container of some frozen milky deliciousness, a former student popped into my mind.

I don’t need to take this one occurence in my day and carry it into my afternoon-evening-night-morning-next day! I could reach out to someone, just as she does when she needs a lift!

She has reached out to me various times over the past five years. As we know (or have experienced), all manner of events occur in a young person’s life and not all adolecents have direct access to a constant, dependable person. When these times arise, she doesn’t go down the rabbit hole, even if she wants to jump in feet first…

Student as Bugs…but no!
(en.wikipedia.org)

Instead, she makes the leap, back through time, back to a place that is familiar and constant. So I look in the mirror and think, really, Jodi? I pick up my phone and ring a friend.

I am inspired but this young lady, spanning the years to seek out the support she needs. Her strength and determination inspires me to look up for help, move past the bumps in the road, learn from tripping over them and leave them behind.

Image result for two triumphant female cartoon characters
My Inspiration – My Former Student
(cgmeetup.net)

I am a teacher.

I am a teacher.

I greet teenagers each morning with sleep in their eyes.

With hope, encouraging words and accomplishments, their faces rise.

I listen to questions, concerns and thoughts that cross each mind.

They look ahead, forward, onward and upward to seek and to find.

Watching the adults carefully for moments to ask their whys,

I answer questions after showing compassion and not with sighs.

They seek to find the answers that seem to fit,

Their hopes, dreams, and aspirations that never quit.

I hear and see their perseverance through all their tries,

As they look for acceptance which never dies.

I am a teacher.

I am inspired by a parent.

I am inspired by a parent. As a teacher of elementary and middle school students for 30 years, I have seen the drastic decline in parent support of teachers. Teachers seem to be under a warped magnifying glass by the general public. What does this magnifying glass see? The truth? Or the distorted sense of the word?

This skewed view is seen on the television news and in newspapers, depicting teachers as lazy, over-paid bon-bon eating babysitters that hang out in the teachers’ lounges with summers off to frolick without a care in the world. Most recently this lens is depicted via a town community page of ‘concerned parents’ which is full of misinformed people shouting out their disgust at the schools and the teachers they entrust their very own children to for seven hours each day – longer than many of them spend with their own children on a daily basis. I’m not interested in defending my profession, nor am I an advocate of watching the “news” chosen to be reported on the popular networks, or reading gossip columns that trash talk under the guise of being concerned, but I am interested in sharing how I am inspired by one parent.

One parent, on this day, this 5352nd school day working with a group of the overall 6000+ students that I’ve worked with over the years, stood out in a way that I haven’t seen in a long time. This parent’s voice would have echoed the voices of hundreds of parents years ago, but not today. Today this parent stood strong, stood behind a teacher, stood up for a teacher, supported that teacher’s work, prior work and faith in her future work. This parent voiced her belief in the dedicated intention of this teacher, of her past work with one of her own children and the confidence that all of the positivity seen over and over again portrayed by this teacher occurs each day and will continue. She stood up, as an advocate for a teacher, at a time when teachers seem to have such small voices in our communities today. 


Those few words held so much power and remind me of how a small effort of one parent can show teachers that they are supported. Although teachers may often feel defeated in this age of testing scores and staff cuts, I smile at the thought that this magnifying glass was polished.  A clear picture of what is truly happening in schools by this teacher and thousands just like her – daily focused time and effort, supporting and teaching each and every student with enthusiasm and dedication. What a gift was given today!  

I am inspired by a parent.

I am inspired by my student.

I am inspired by my student.

Last week one of my students was having difficulty with an academic task. He was working through the stress of the work and his self-confidence in his ability to complete it in the time allotted. As this student’s stress was escalating, becoming apparent to students surrounding him, an angel reached his wing out to comfort the student.

This angel was another student sitting at the same table. In the most gentle, soothing voice and without looking up, he touched the anxious student. With his hand on the boy’s shoulder, he softly spoke to him saying, “You’ve got this. You are the most determined person I know. You can do it. You’ve got this.”

“You’ve got this.” From one adolescent to another, from an eighth grade classroom of angst, anxiety, fear of being different and bullied. From the heart of one student who, like all the others, experiences the ups and downs of this difficult age where minute to minute can be a struggle between independence and dependence, invincibility and vulnerability, triumph and disappointment. An act of solace from one young man who stopped his work to help another in pain. That call to reach out to a peer was deeper than the academic work at hand; it was a powerful yearning to connect, to alleviate the pain in another, to encourage, to motivate, to support.

This angel gracefully removed his wingtips from his peer’s shoulder and silently resumed his own work. The touch of those fingertips was felt on the shoulder, and his words felt in the troubled student’s heart. Anxiety abated, he too silently resumed his task at hand. “You’ve got this” echoed on as I watched them work.

I am inspired by my student.