The power of knowing your pupils

August 7, 2018 Educator's Corner Opinion

As a grade school teacher, I believe in the power of getting to know my pupils. My practice of knowing my pupils by name, strength, and need had a huge impact on my teaching career.   I am about to reach my first decade of teaching and I realized that this is a wonderful principle to live by.
Every school opening, I made it a priority to get to know all my pupils. Through this, I quickly began to realize the power and control that pupils had over their own learning. My strongest lessons were those that were unplanned and controlled by the pupils.
One of the most memorable moments of my teaching career came after my frustration with a particular pupil who would always disrupt class time by shouting out and interrupting his peers. Throughout the year, we bumped heads on numerous occasions. From day one, I knew he was a natural leader. His peers all looked up to him; right or wrong, they always followed his lead. Yet, he had a huge problem with authority and would always push the limits, especially outside of the classroom. One day in class, after multiple disruptions, I snapped, “You’re coming in here for recess!” He sat back angrily. I knew the moment after I said it that I was feeding into his dislike of authority and teachers. I knew I had to fix this, but I also knew I needed to keep my foot down. This pupil excelled in Math—how could I possibly use this to my advantage? As he walked in during recess time, I asked him to grab a calculator and to meet me by our daily schedule. Together, we calculated all the time that was lost in transitioning throughout the day. When we finally arrived at a number, we multiplied that to determine how much time was lost during a week, a month, and then a year. His jaw dropped to the floor, and he said to me, “And that doesn’t even count all the times you have to wait for us to settle down!” With a sigh of relief, I gave him the last five minutes of his recess. After recess, as I was waiting for the pupils to settle in to their desks, I noticed him staring at the clock to determine how much time it was taking. He walked up to my desk and asked, “Can I share with the class what we calculated during recess?” For the next 15 minutes, this pupil took control of the classroom. The rest of the class was engaged, listening to him speak, helping him to recalculate the numbers, and immersed in a powerful conversation about our learning time.
Truly, teachers were born to discover the strengths and intervene in the needs of the learners they meet each day of their lives. ANGELITA A. ALIPING, Quezon Hill Elementary School