Responsibility

This past week I was wallowing in self-misery. I was selfish and whiny. I complained a lot about the new schedule and that I had students in all the time at recess and after school for behavioural detentions and incomplete homework. I ranted to my spouse about how I and my students hate the daily "Spotlight", a time when we as a school learn about and discuss positive values (such as responsibility), achieve learning goals and how to be "Champions". As one student put it, the announcements "sound like a commercial".

Then, while I was reading through a student's journal entry about his favourite time of day, I read this:

"...but some of my family has to wait to eat because in my house we only have two chairs."

The next day, students were to write about something that was valuable to them. The idea of the exercise was to think about and write about something that has little worth in terms of money but a lot of value in terms of memories and so on. Even so, I still read a number of entries about Ipods and Xboxes, but had a few students write about photos, quality time, and then this:

"My kookum (grandmother) is valuable to me...because my Mom and Dad keep leaving us...". I don't want to tell you about the rest of what she wrote. It made me cry.

A third student wrote that if she is caught drinking one more time, she will be put in jail. Yet another student was terrified to go home because a care-giver was called about a behavourial issue.

The realization? Responsibility. It's one thing to "talk" about it during Spotlight, it's another to do it. So, enough complaining. Enough selfishness. If we want them to be responsible, students need adults in their life to model responsibility. Though I'm an "outsider", I am one of the few adults in my students' lives for a few hours each day that they can count on. I need to model responsibility. I need to be dependable, accountable for my own actions, do my work everyday in a positive manner, be trustworthy, and keep my head. Most of all, though, I need to continue to provide a safe place for my students to be, where they feel valued and respected.