With Valentine’s Day upon us, I can’t help but think that maybe, just maybe, a teacher had a primary role in the popularizing of Valentines. I figure a teacher must have had a hand in it because not only is teaching a labor of love, but because celebrating Valentine’s Day in cheerful atmosphere of an elementary school is pretty incredible. To be honest, my husband and I don’t do a lot beyond take-out and a movie night, because little can top the experience I have celebrating with my students. Traditionally a nonuniform day, students flood the halls in bright pinks, purples, and reds, toting bags, sometimes larger than themselves, of cards and special treats for one another. Joy, love, and energy: the day is magical.

Also, this is a day when teachers celebrate the love they have for each of their students. Each August we are given a new crop of kids. Some bound through that door on the first day easy to love. Excited and capable learners, eager to please, and adept in getting along and working with many different peers,; these kids effortlessly win over the hearts of their teachers. Others take time to learn to love. Sometimes we have to put effort into learning to love the child who repeatedly needs motivation to get started on anything. Sometimes it is the child who needs direct instruction and repeated help learning to blow his nose. Sometimes it’s the child who gets the academics just fine, but needs lots of coaching on how to talk to friends. Sometimes it is that child who needs extensive coaching on humility, taking chances, and learning that he has made mistakes and that it is okay to make mistakes. Let’s face it, each year we get a new bunch that we are charged to not just teach, but love. And each year, we learn to love each individual.

As teachers it is not about loving our students blindly, nor is it about loving them because we feel sorry for any shortcomings. We love them because we know each child as an individual. We learn about their passions, their strengths, and their challenges. We look at the whole child, we connect, and we love. This love helps drive everything we do as teachers. It is because of this love that we have difficult conversations with parents. Because of this love we spend hours grading with specific and tailored feedback that can help a child level up. Because of this love, we drag ourselves to school with awful colds or little sleep, and muster up the patience and energy to make it through the day. Teaching is truly a labor of love.

So you can imagine how surprised I was to find out that it was NOT in fact a teacher who popularized Valentine’s Day. The “Mother of the Valentine” was Esther Howland, a young businesswoman who began mass production of valentines in the 1840s. So even though we are underpaid, overworked, and didn’t strike it rich by mass producing cards, don’t forget to celebrate why you teach this Valentine’s Day.

Learner, Thinker, Writer: Mary Jacob Harris (@maryjacobr) serves the Trinity School community as a Third Grade Lead Teacher.

As teachers, we constantly give and receive feedback while working with students. However, receiving feedback and teaching students to receive feedback can sometimes cause us to bristle. Like our students, we say we want to learn and grow, but there are times for all of us when receiving feedback is just plain challenging. Stone & Heen explain the challenge: “Receiving feedback sits at the intersection of two needs – our drive to learn and our longing for acceptance” (2015, p.8). Therefore, just as we practice and model taking risks, making mistakes, and learning from failure for our students, we must practice and model receiving feedback.

Feedback is just information. It is a snapshot in time of where we are in our learning and our progress growing into the people we are meant to be. Feedback comes in an abundance of forms. Whether it is the honk of a horn letting us know the light is green, our pants being uncomfortably snug after a fabulous trip to New York, the bewildered looks on students’ faces when they don’t yet understand the distributive property, or the most recent results from a spelling assessment, this is all feedback. Throughout our daily lives, we are constantly receiving feedback. Therefore it is vital we learn, practice, and teach how to receive feedback effectively. The real power in feedback comes in clearly understanding the feedback, reflecting on the information, reflecting on your reaction to the information, and finally deciding how to use that information.

In preparations for student-led conferences and learning how to reflect on feedback, my class read Julia Cook’s Thanks for the Feedback (2013). Through this picture book, we were all reminded of the various forms of feedback and guided on ways to receive feedback. Students thoughtfully discussed how compliments, appreciation, and correct answers are often easier to receive. Then my children truly surprised me in conversations that demonstrated their understandings of receiving, reflecting, and implementing constructive criticism as essential to learning. Together my students and I brainstormed a list of suggestions for receiving feedback. The list sits at the front of the room to remind all of us the importance in learning to receive feedback. This important reminder is just as important for me, as it is for my students.

Learner, Thinker, Writer: Mary Jacob Harris (@maryjacobr) serves the Trinity School community as a Third Grade Lead Teacher.

Cook, Julia. (2013). Thanks for the Feedback. Boys Town, NE: Boys Town Press.

Stone, D. & Heen, S. (2015). Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well. New York, NY: Penguin Books.

I dread writing and fear the times when I have to share my writing with others. Whether it is progress reports, a formal email, or a blog post, I have anxiety about other people reading my writing.  I stress that others will quickly find comma splices or judge me for poor word choice. I truly worry that people might think I am stupid because of my writing skills. In fact I have worried about composing this post since the moment I signed up to write it. However, I write as a model for my students because this is me taking a risk and accepting that this post is probably full of grammatical mistakes.

My fearful journey with writing began in Ms. Griffin’s Second Grade classroom when I was diagnosed with dyslexia. Despite teachers, professors, tutors, friends, and family dedicating countless hours trying to help me develop my writing skills, twenty-three years later I still get that same uneasy feeling in my stomach when I know someone else is going to read my writing. However, it is that same nauseous feeling that helps me empathize with my students when they fear taking risks with their learning or worry about making mistakes. While Michelle and I constantly remind students they need to take risks to grow and that making mistakes is okay, I thought it was time to model risk taking. So this post is for the twenty kiddos that enter my room each morning. This is Miss Rankin taking a risk in order to grow as a teacher, to flourish.

Learner, Thinker, Writer: Mary Jacob Rankin serves Trinity School as a First Grade Teacher @maryjacobr