I had a professor in college who had a poster on his office door that said "The Extraordinary is Inside...Waiting." He would oftentimes incorporate this quote into his lectures, and even had it put on the t-shirts for our education honor society. He used this quote to motivate us to work hard and search to find the extraordinary within ourselves.
As a teacher, I use this quote to remind myself that all of my students, regardless of their behavior issues or cognitive abilities, are extraordinary in their own way. When I look at my students I see them for their strengths, not their weaknesses. When I first looked at my class roster last June, I saw bright, mostly verbal kids with a lot of personality and potential. I saw all the activities I could do with them, and was excited to start the new year. Others, I had found out later looked at my class and saw their negative behaviors; anxious, crying, tantrums, stubborn etc. I honestly believe that one major reason my students' behaviors didn't take over my class, was because my staff and I truly cared for our students and focused on their strengths and positive traits rather than their negative ones. Whenever a negative behavior started to arise, we would nip it in the bud, and continue about our day. We only focused on the positive behaviors, and gave our students opportunities to succeed instead of fail.
I firmly believe that children live down to expectations as much as they live up to them. Children are very intuitive and can sense when they are liked and disliked by adults. If a child can already tell that an adult doesn't like him before the school year even starts, what motivation does he have to do his best and work hard? When he knows that he is only expected to cause trouble and act out, then why even try and behave? It is our duty as teachers to see the extraordinary in all of our students and bring it out for the world to see. If we don't then who will?
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