Janet Scott
My house was clean, the table was set, the pasta was ready to go into the oven, and I had even made arrangements for my kids and husband to be out of the house. Then the freezing rain started to fall. I called my friends, and we decided that it wasn’t safe for them to come to our holiday dinner that night. We were all so disappointed! Our group of six had been talking about our get-together for months, and I had been preparing all week.
I hung up the phone and sulked for a bit, but then the wheels began turning. I knew this was the only night everyone was available for dinner at my house before the holiday break, but it wasn’t the only time we would see one another. So I put the pasta dish in the fridge and began thinking about how I could reimagine our holiday get-together.
Here is how it turned out:
It wasn’t quite as beautiful as the original holiday dinner that I had planned, but we had a wonderful meal together. We laughed, shared, and had fun—just as we had intended all along!
Thank goodness we are all teachers. Doesn’t this kind of thing happen to us every day in the classroom? We have an amazing lesson ready to go . . . and then the fire alarm goes off, cutting the available lesson time in half. Or the first snow of the season starts falling as soon as everyone has just settled into their Daily 5 choice. Or a parent unexpectedly shows up at the door with cupcakes for her child’s birthday.
Yes, flexibility is key! We can always split our amazing lesson over two days, or switch our Daily 5 rotation to a writing or art time involving snow. We can certainly make time to celebrate a student! We are teachers. We deal with lots of growing humans every day, and it gets messy and disorganized. Children are not machines, stacks of paper, or e-mails. They shouldn’t have to stick to a rigid schedule or ignore exciting things happening just outside their window. We should make the most of every day and every situation, no matter what the circumstances.
So the next time a little adversity comes your way in the classroom, remember that learning and engagement don’t have to be lost. It might just take a bit of creativity—and definitely flexibility—to get it done.
Keep up the amazing work, and cheers to a wonderful year of learning!
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