The Teachable Moments

For several years I taught young children (ages 18 mo to 5 yrs), and the one thing that always stuck with me was that any time could be a teachable moment. When I asked the children questions, I tried to keep them open ended. When I asked for their opinion I also asked why they chose what they chose. I listened intently to every answer. When other teachers would raise their eyebrows at the children’s outlandish stories, I hung on every word. For me, this was the way to get to know the students. I wanted to know how they thought and where their imaginations took them. If someone declared, “It can’t be done!” I would chime in with, “Why not?”

There was a group of students who seemed to always be in trouble. If it wasn’t one thing it was another. They were scattered around in different groups, but it always seemed to be the same children. Being the inquisitive person that I was, I was fascinated with finding out why. After some discussion (and pushing on my part), the children were all transferred into my group so I could observe them better. I watched them as a group, but focused on them as individuals. There was one boy in particular who seemed to be trouble as soon as he showed up. He never asked for anything; he just took. Your answer could never be no, he was going to have it. Whoever tried to say no ended up getting hurt. While some passed this off as “just a phase” or him just being that way, I dug deeper. There had to be something else going on here. So I watched and made observations.

After observing and jumping in as referee when needed, I learned the reason behind the behavior. The boy did not have the proper language skills to ask for what he wanted. When he tried to talk he became frustrated because he could not state clearly what he wanted. So, he had a language barrier. This was fantastic. It turned out to be something that could be fixed. After working with him to use his words and other means to explain what he was trying to say, the altercations just about ceased.

Watching over the other children in the group, I determined that they needed more attention, group and individual. They wanted to be heard and listened to. They wanted to participate with each other and have personal triumphs. I could give this to them. The result of this was shocking.

The owner of the school system contacted the director who ran our location. She wanted to know what had changed about the room that I supervised. The director inquired why and asked the owner to explain. There had been such a significant drop in any type of incident that the owner thought they were just not being reported. By learning from the students about their needs and how best they would thrive, it made a large enough impact that the owner became aware. The teachable moments do not always happen from teacher to student.