Jellywashers: Endangered Breed

When someone roots for you or compliments you, how does that make you feel? Great, comfortable, proud or uncomfortable? or something else?

It seems to me that many people feel uncomfortable, even angry around people who give appropriate comments or work to boost morale.

These people are called JellyWashers. Why? Because they will tell you when you have jelly (real and metaphorical) on your face when no one else will. They will compliment you. They will support you. They will trust you. THEY WILL BELIEVE.

Photo by Łukasz Strachanowski
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They have expectations that others are jellywashers, but that is so far from the truth. Jellywashers are a rare, endangered group. So how do these grown-ups do it? How do they live in a world where people are often working against their own best interests on a regular basis?

It seems to me that JellyWashers are a rare, endangered variety in our species who need to be celebrated, not denigrated. They can do something few others can do. They can suspend cynicism and develop learned naivete'...imagination that the world can be a better place by encouraging others with appropriate comments to help enlighten and improve their daily life.

Do you know any of these people? How do you treat them? Do you shake your head? Do they embarrass you? Do you celebrate them? Do you join them?

Think about YOUR attitude and ask questions before you assume that Jellywashers are naive pawns who remain ignorant of a world where bad things happen. They are not. They are the people who are able to overcome diversity to push on through the dark world to encourage the rest of us to push on also.

Jellywashers CHOOSE to live in a world of positive ethos. They CHOOSE to work to improve their own life, so they can help others wash the clay from their eyes. Jellywashers choose to help fellow humans see themselves and others as worthy of respect and care. Thank goodness for the jellywashers of the world. What ethical behaviors can you CHOOSE today?

Choices Teachers Make

The core philosophy of the PLN, Personal Learning Network, sometimes called by a variety of names like: Personal Learning Environment(PLE), Personal Learning Community (PLC), Professional Learning Network (PLN), or Professional Learning Community(PLC), remains the collaboration among your peers, professional in their field of expertise, in my case: teaching. When other people, who work to educate and inform their best practices, share their experiences and reflect on how these best practices informed their actions, they become your teacher. This is the reciprocal teaching factor that plays such an important role in effective professional development.

Relating to teachers' choices in learning to know our students and using that information to guide best practice is my focus. Children's interests in the 21st century can be boosted by all teachers and parents, not just by those with advanced resources. With that caveat in mind, this advertisement video does illustrate the point of how we can use technology as a tool to enhance learning while we get to know our students.

Today, I was reading blog posts among those from my PLN, and I was so drawn to this post, Successful Teaching: Highlighting Students’ Talents, by my colleague/friend, Pat Hensley, also known as loonyhiker, I knew I NEEDED to respond to it. This poignant story of how the teacher can validate or deny a person's ability to achieve in school based on their perceptions prompted me to make this response to Pat's thoughtful reflection of best practice as she experienced it. She reminded me that quality teaching is a choice that teachers make with help from a quality learning community.

I appreciated your reflective questions relating your experiences with your skateboard boy and the yoyo boy in the video. Children have hobbies, and frequently these hobbies are reflections of what they would want to do for work as adults. I am always concerned when these talents are dismissed out of hand.



While other teachers dismissed skateboard boy and his talents, you did not. "I would ask him why he was so good for me and not others and he looked at me and said, 'You like me and wouldn’t let me get away with any of that.' He felt the other teachers didn’t like him but he knew I cared and that made a big difference to him."

I am sure the other teachers may have thought they liked him, but as Dr. William Glasser, MD says in his classic, The Quality School Teacher:
"...we will work hard for those we care for(belonging), for those we respect and who respect us(power), for those with whom we laugh (fun), for those who allow us to think and act for ourselves (freedom), and for those who help us to make our lives secure (survival). The more that all five of these needs are satisfied in our relationship with the (teacher)manager who asks us to do the work, the harder we will work for that (teacher)manager.

Teachers also need opportunities to make appropriate choices, and they deserve principal teachers who are lead managers.

Sometimes not all teachers have the opportunity to work with those who will bring out their best, so they revert to a more coercive stance. I believe schools can be greatly helped if everyone works to make their school The Quality School I hope you don't mind that I have included a link to one of my blog posts, n2teaching: The Quality School Teacher, that relates to yours.

Thanks for this thought-provoking post that reminds me why teachers teach.

The Quality School Teacher

While moderating comments on this blog, I came across one poignant comment made by an anonymous college student. This student was reading Dr. William Glasser's profound work, The Quality School: Managing Students Without Coercion. Afterward, Anonymous would continue the assignment by making a lesson based on the tenets proposed in The Quality School.

I was so touched by the powerful comment of this anonymous person wanting to learn more, yet recognizing that Dr. Glasser's ideas are timeless in the power to move learning beyond anything we often experience.

Immediately, I responded with encouragement and (hopefully) a suggestion, as Dr. William Glasser would say, that Anonymous would be well served to adapt some of the lessons shared in The Quality School.

That wasn't the end, for me. I began to think,

What did Dr. Glasser's work mean to me? and How did it affect my teaching philosophy and practice?

It seems to me that Anonymous must be on a similar journey.

As I thought back to the time when I first learned about The Quality School, I recognized two basic questions that guided my personal learning process to improve my impact as a teacher.

*How could I be effective in teaching and learning?
*Where do I start the journey?

Starting remains a potent obstacle in anyone's work, so I was hoping that my words were of some help to Anonymous. I believe that Anonymous wants to be an excellent teacher who is beginning the quest to teach well.

Anonymous was also a great help to me. When I read my original post, The Quality School, I realized I needed to go back to the core of my experiences in learning about The Quality School. I would refresh my experiences on my educational journey. I needed my STUFF.

I keep all of my teaching artifacts, materials, and books, including Dr. Glasser's in my small warehouse on a farm about 4 miles out of town. Yesterday, I decided to go out there and find these books. Since I hadn't been out to the warehouse in several months, I was concerned. I hoped I wouldn't spend a great amount of time looking for the right box among the vast number I use at various times in my teaching and professional development.

When I began looking, I was overwhelmed and amazed at how well I organized my STUFF. I forgot that I finally did it. I really organized my STUFF, so I could utilize it.

Every box had a detailed label on it. I enjoyed looking through the boxes, cabinets, and drawers as I thought about all the lessons past, present and future. After thirty minutes, I had oriented myself well enough to seriously look for my favorite books on education philosophy, psychology, and pedagogy.

As I lifted one box from the top, I noticed some valuable notebooks containing lessons on graphic organizers for reading, writing and math. I set these by the door. Then I looked in the same area and there was a small plastic container that said "MOM's CDs". I wondered, "What's this?". I opened them and found music CDs I thought I had lost, but now they were found. Right next to this container was a very sturdy cardboard box with my handwritten note: IMPORTANT EDUCATIONAL BOOKS, INCLUDING THE QUALITY SCHOOL.

Surprise and shock ruled the moment, and then I felt that strong sense of elation when you truly accomplish a task well.

I took my loot home, after I did the Dance of Joy.

Beyond these past two days, I continue sorting, reading, writing and thinking. Tonight, I finished reading The Quality School Teacher, and I focused my efforts surveying class activities and lessons related to Dr. Glasser's tenets.

Even now, after all these years, I am overwhelmed by Dr. Glasser's work. I would like to share THE SIX CONDITIONS OF QUALITY SCHOOLWORK, that he discusses in Chapter Three, The Six Conditions of Quality of the bookThe Quality School Teacher.

1. There must be a warm, supportive classroom environment.
2. Students should be asked to do only useful work.
3. Students are always asked to do the best they can do.
4. Students are asked to evaluate their own work and improve it.
5. Quality work always feels good.
6. Quality work is NEVER destructive.

Now, I know why I was so affected by the short, yet profound anonymous comment about The Quality School. When you read about how you, the teacher, can teach and live in a quality school, it is a shock, a revelation. Quality seems impossible, but that is what Dr. Glasser says is only our personal reaction, based on our own lack of experience.