A Teacher’s Cure for the Winter Blues

Guest blogger Rianna Das is in her third year teaching 6th grade Science at Olmsted South, an all-girls public school. She is from Charlotte, NC and graduated from Furman University in 2014. 

The winter makes me sad. I’m used to Carolina winters that last, at the most, a month. The lack of sun and freezing temperatures seem to seep into every area of my life. Most of the time, I want to spend all day under the covers of my bed watching Netflix. It’s hard to wake up day after day at 5 a.m. (okay, really like 5:45 after I hit snooze a bunch of times), put on extra layers, and drive to school before the sun is even up. But, let me tell you a quick story of why it’s worth it.

I’ll start by saying I am not a touchy-feely person. I do not necessarily like hugs, overly romantic/sappy movies, or feel-good stories. However, this preference is immediately discounted every day when I walk into my job teaching 11 year old girls (yes, only girls) who spend more time drawing pictures of pink hearts and listening to Justin Bieber’s serenades about teenage love than anything else.

Most recently, I had an unexpected feel-good moment start with a quiz on the rock cycle. It’s a complicated topic for any sixth grader to understand as the cycle is often pictured with multiple arrows crisscrossing each other with complicated words for labels. One of my students did not do as well as she would have liked. Although she generally does well in school, this student is an ELL (English Language Learner), having just come from El Salvador less than two years ago.

Her accent is beautiful, everything she says rolls off her tongue like a song. And, most of the time her background brings rich, different experiences to our classroom discussions, but sometimes it is understandably hard for her to learn about difficult concepts, such as metamorphic rocks while also learning the language.

Needless to say, she was quite disappointed when I handed back her quiz. It became tumbleweed rolling across the floor in a crumpled up paper ball. It’s always tough to see a 6^th grade girl upset even if it is over a 10-point quiz. I quietly picked up the quiz, unrolled the ball of paper, shook off the floor grime, and laid it back on her desk. I knelt down and whispered to her, “This quiz is worth almost nothing when it comes to your grade. If you pay attention the next couple days and study a little bit at home, you can do better on the test. That’s what counts!”

I could not tell if my words made an immediate impact, as she rolled her eyes and put her head down. I did notice, however, that the paper stayed un-crumpled. Even as we began our review for our test, she was mildly engaged but not super involved in paying attention. I was worried, but at this point, I had given her all the tools she needed to succeed and all I could do now was to wait and see if she was going to use them.

The day of the test came. I walked in slow laps around the classroom, monitoring the students’ work. Every time I would walk by her desk, I would look to see if her answers were correct. I found myself silently cheering each time I passed her as her answers were almost all right. As soon as she had turned in her paper, I quickly and anxiously graded it. She had only missed one question! I was ecstatic and could not wait to see her reaction.

I immediately called her over and told her. As dramatic as crumpling her quiz and throwing it on the floor was, this was even more intense of an action. She screamed, jumped up and down, and had the biggest smile plastered across her face. She looked at me and said, “I studied SO much at home because I wanted to do better!”

Again, like I said, I am not super sentimental or sappy, but, even though I was attempting to quiet her down (remember we were taking a test) I was equally as excited as she was and had just as big a smile across my face.

So, there you have it. If the cold weather and impending snow have got you feeling down, spend a couple days helping a middle school girl learn the rock cycle. It’s not only a self-confidence boost for them, but for a teacher as well.