Saturday, January 31, 2009
Teachers or Educators?
According to a news report, a certain private school in Washington was recently faced with a unique problem. A number of 12-year-old girls were beginning to use lipstick and would put it on in the bathroom. That was fine, but after they put on their lipstick, they would press their lips to the mirror leaving dozens of little lip prints. Every night the maintenance man would remove them, and the next day the girls would put them back. Finally the principal decided that something had to be done. She called all the girls to the bathroom and met them there with the maintenance man. She explained that all these lip prints were causing a major problem for the custodian who had to clean the mirrors every night (you can just imagine the yawns from the little princesses). To demonstrate how difficult it had been to clean the mirrors, she asked the maintenance man to show the girls how much effort was required. He took out a long-handled squeegee, dipped it in the toilet, and cleaned the mirror with it. Since then, there have been no lip prints on the mirror. There are teachers and then there are educators.
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Whether true or not (and boy do I want to believe it's true!), I think it illustrates the need for teachers to think and problem solve creatively. Our students don't all act and react the same, so we can't always perform the same way. We have to be ready to find solutions for the individuals that come to us in the classroom so we can provide the best possible learning environment.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing that funny!
I think I received an email with that story. I think, whether true or not, teachers do need to think outside the box to get kids to learn. It's like Lori's comment on my blog about using sports stats to help students with math/statistics.
ReplyDeleteI had to share this with my principal and maintance guy at school, they loved it. Great why to get them to understand. Fact is our janitor wanted to do the same demonstration with some six grade...boys? Not kwel. oh well loved it
ReplyDeleteI,m sure that would have been an awful reaction when they discovered what the janitor did to clean the lip stick. It reminds me of a friend of mine that ate some dog mess mixed into a candy bar and didn't know and said it was the best bar that he ever tasted. You never know what will come back to you until its to late. Just do the pruden thing and you will have no problem. Kewl-Robert
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