If you tell yourself that you’d rather be doing something else during your institutional duties, you just made what you are doing now 1000 times harder.
Many teachers approach these duties, such as lunchroom supervision, as just that — a duty. We’d rather be doing something else, and this is just a chore to be endured. Employment contracts for teachers often include specific duties. They are a fact of life.
But it is all in how we approach them. The potential good may surprise you.
Don’t think about what you can’t accomplish, think about what you can
Here are three tips on how to make the most of duty period:
- If you are a teacher on hall duty, use this as a chance to converse with all people of the school as they move about the building. Expand your acquaintances and deepen relationships. Share experiences. Talk curriculum with other teachers, learn about kids from counselors, get to know the football coach. Identify and report youngsters who are hall wanderers. You know, those kids who ask all of their teachers to go to the bathroom, every period throughout the day. They are constantly in the halls. You never know when you may see or notice.
- If you are a lunchroom supervisor, use the chance to perceive youngsters in a social setting. Who socializes with whom. You can overhear things and develop a grapevine that really works in the best interests of kids. It is also a great time to talk sports and movies with kids, which many are eager to do so they can relate to you as a person. Your social studies class isn’t the place, but the lunchroom is. Music concerts, church projects and fundraisers, family events and school sports are all good topics for lunch duty. Get to know the kids and their whole families. I once shared a passion for sport fishing with a young man. We talked constantly in the lunchroom. Then one day, the boy had what we call a “meltdown” in school, causing quite a scene. In the tumult, the boy asked for me, and I talked with him privately to calm the situation down. I never had the boy in class. It was only through that lunchroom fishing talk that I knew him, but the trust he had in me was enough to help out in a difficult moment.
If you proctor a study hall, it is irritating when youngsters show up who claim to have no work to do. The thing to do here is just to recognize that you can invite them to accomplish something, but you cannot impose it on them. At a time when kids just want to retreat into their phones, the best recourse is to present something intriguing and invite them to think about it. With idle students in a study hall, show some video clips of the Asian tsunami of 2004. Once the kids are sufficiently awed by the size and power of the giant wall of water, give them some facts on plate tectonics and geology. Volcanoes too. Tell them to look up Krakatoa on their phones. Learning is taking place. Just dangle something positive in front of them and many will join in. But don’t try to enforce anything. This is key. Casually invite them to join you.
Your call of duty: Give it some TLC
You love:
- Teaching
- Learning
- Children
School duties allow us to engage all three if we approach them the right way. You never know what good might emerge.
If you teach American history at the high school or middle school level, try out a free Shays’ Rebellion lesson plan from the History Dr. Your kids will love learning about this fascinating episode in United States history.