Christmas Time

I'm officially on Christmas time. That means some late nights, a few sleep-ins and a lot more napping than usual. I have a pile of marking that will probably not leave my bag until the Sunday night before I go back to work, and there are of course the usual travel plans.
It also means that I will be reading Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol -- as it is a holiday tradition my wife and I started our first Christmas together. From that book there is a particular quote that I like to think of as words to live by. They are spoken by Scrooge's nephew in their exchange before Scrooge first sees Marley in his door knocker.

"I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round -- apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that -- as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!"

The Teacher with the Good Hair

In teaching, as in anything else, there are good days, bad days, then there are days that are just different. Last Friday was one of those days.
I have a class that, behaviour wise, is not my favourite class to teach. It has been a struggle for me to find ways to manage the class in a way that everyone is learning the material. I only teach them once a week, and that is part of the difficulty; building any rapport with them has been difficult.
However, on Friday, at the start of the class they all quieted down much quicker than normal and I made a comment about it and smiled. The remarks they made next shocked me: "Did you see that? Sir smiled;" "He must be having a good day; he smiled."
I stopped and asked them if they really thought I never smiled. I realized that despite trying all of the classroom management techniques I know, I never just stopped and had a laugh with them.
I have decided (and I told them this) that I would be focusing on positive behaviour so that they can see a better side of me. I will send positive postcards home and Respect cards to their form tutors, as opposed to the negative referrals that have been far too common.
There was one other comment that added to the strangeness of the day. Apparently to a group of year sevens, I am "the teacher with the good hair." -- that gave me a good laugh!