'She is saving lives': teacher's technique for finding and helping lonely students is going viral
If you've ever needed proof that the world needs great teachers it's now.
Not only do they teach your children, maths, reading, history, science, but they are the guardians of your little one's transition from the safety of the home to the scariness of the wider world.
This is a message that struck Glennon Doyle as she approached her son's teacher about some maths homework.
While helping her 11-year-old son with homework, she noticed that long division was far more confusing than she remembered it. So she asked his teacher to give her a quick maths lesson.
"It took me a solid hour to complete one problem," Doyle wrote in her blog. "But l could tell that Chase’s teacher liked me anyway."
They began chatting about what the most important part of teaching was "shaping little hearts to become contributors to a larger community."
What she said next astounded Doyle.
"Every Friday afternoon Chase’s teacher asks her students to take out a piece of paper and write down the names of four children with whom they’d like to sit the following week. The children know that these requests may or may not be honoured. She also asks the students to nominate one student whom they believe has been an exceptional classroom citizen that week. All ballots are privately submitted to her."
Except she's not looking to seating arrangements or to nominate exceptional citizens, she's looking for something even better.
"And every single Friday afternoon, after the students go home, Chase’s teacher takes out those slips of paper, places them in front of her and studies them. She looks for patterns.
"Who is not getting requested by anyone else?
"Who doesn't even know who to request?
"Who never gets noticed enough to be nominated?
"Who had a million friends last week and none this week?"
She's looking for lonely children, children who are being bullied, isolated or excluded.
"It is like mining for gold – the gold being those little ones who need a little help – who need adults to step in and TEACH them how to make friends, how to ask others to play, how to join a group, or how to share their gifts with others.
"And it’s a bully deterrent because every teacher knows that bullying usually happens outside of her eyeshot – and that often kids being bullied are too intimidated to share. But as she said – the truth comes out on those safe, private, little sheets of paper."
Doyle then asked her how long she had been using the ballot. She replied since the Sandy Hook Massacre in 2012.
"This brilliant woman watched Columbine knowing that ALL VIOLENCE BEGINS WITH DISCONNECTION. All outward violence begins as inner loneliness. She watched that tragedy KNOWING that children who aren't being noticed will eventually resort to being noticed by any means necessary."
By looking at her classroom and actually seeing each and every one of her students, she is saving lives.
"[S]he decided to start fighting violence early and often, and with the world within her reach. What Chase’s teacher is doing when she sits in her empty classroom studying those lists written with shaky 11 year old hands – is SAVING LIVES. I am convinced of it. She is saving lives.
"And what this mathematician has learned while using this system is something she really already knew: that everything – even love, even belonging – has a pattern to it. And she finds those patterns through those lists – she breaks the codes of disconnection. And then she gets lonely kids the help they need. It’s math to her. It’s MATH.
"All is love- even math. Amazing."
Unfortunately, that teacher retires this year and we can only hope that their are more out there like her.
"TEACH ON, WARRIORS. You are the first responders, the front line, the disconnection detectives, and the best and ONLY hope we’ve got for a better world. What you do in those classrooms when no one is watching- it’s our best hope."