MUSC is a wonderful hospital. Having spent a lot of time there this last month, I can say that they certainly understand the importance of relationships. One of my Mom’s nurses always spent time talking with us-not just about my Mom but about us. One day one of her nurses, spent a lot of time asking me questions about my life, my boys, and my job. Before he left the room, he looked at me and said, you sure do remind me of your Mom. “You look and act just like her,” he said. These are not words that many 40+ year olds want to hear. “You are becoming your mother” is what I heard ringing in my ears the entire drive back home. Not that my mom is a terrible person, she is not, she is wonderful, but there is something about becoming my mother that stopped me in my tracks. We don’t always like to hear it, but it’s true. It’s in our DNA. The older we get, the more we resemble our parents. If you’re especially close to your parents, you might even start to act like them and before you know it, you are them.
The more I drove the more I thought about this and the more I thought about school. Isn’t this true about school? I remember once when Rosebro#1 was in kindergarten and he was “playing school” with then 3 year old Rosebro#2 who wasn’t behaving very well in pretend school (shocking). Rosebro#1 made me cry with laughter at his dead on impression of Mrs. Jacobs when attempting to get Rosebro#2 to do the right thing. Children mimic our behavior. I remember that same year in kindergarten being at the public library and Rosebro#1 checked out a book because it was one of “Mrs. Bahnmuller’s favorites”. You see his love of this book came from his teacher’s behavior. He didn’t guess it was her favorite, she had told him.
I speak a lot about modeling to our students. I don’t mean modeling just our behavior or writing or how to work out a math problem, but modeling our own love of learning. We should model how we want our kids to behave. You model those expectations, but what you should be asking yourself is do you model your passion for learning? Do you pick up a book and show your kids how much you’ve fallen in love with the words? Do you model your writing? Do you tell them about an interesting video you watched or newspaper article you read about something you’re studying in Social Studies or Science. Do you explain with excitement how you used measuring skills to make curtains at home or order tile for your new kitchen design? If you don’t how is it expected that your kids will fall in love with learning? If you aren’t passionate, how then can our kids ever be? As I thought about me becoming my Mom, I eventually was grateful for that statement. She is a strong, kind, generous, sometimes goofy and airheaded, a graceful Christian woman who always puts her family before herself. Who wouldn’t want to become that? When you think about that, when you think about what you are modeling to your students either with your behavior or your joy of being a life long learner, do you want your kids to be that? Do you want your kids to show your same level of enthusiasm or passion? If not, you only have the power to change the model.
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