Inside every child lives a teacher pleaser. From pre-school through graduation children are in a student/teacher relationship with their instructors in which “making a teacher happy or satisfied or pleased with me” is a focal motivation/reward of each day. Children sitting in a class with other students often compete for their teacher’s smile. With maturity, a child learns that teacher smiles associated with school-based achievements are earned smiles. Teachers give feedback to children in many ways, but “I am smiling for you and with you” is the simplest yet most rewarding of all. This is true even for the senior-sliding 12th graders. Sincere smiles work wonders!
What kind of smile do you have?
I ask this because children know the difference in adult smiles. Consider these four.
- I am just smiling.
- I am smiling at you.
- I am smiling for you.
- I am smiling with you.
The first is a loser, the second says little, and the second and third are winners.
Smiling by itself is just smiling. Our human physiology makes smiling easier than frowning, so why not smile. Or said differently, smiling comes naturally. And smiling in the presence of children comes easily. Yet, a smile that is on the mouth and jaw line only and never lights up the eyes is just that, a biologic. On the other hand, a smile that lights up the eyes, raises the cheeks, crinkles the skin, and that even moves the ears is psychological. It is stimulus-response personified. Children learn to know the difference between deadpan smiles and real grins, because they see it in the adults in their world. Children know their teachers’ smiles.
Children in school are in the presence of adults all day. Bus drivers, crossing guards, hall monitors, custodians, food servers, librarians, teacher aides, teachers, counselors, and principals. These folks do not smile all the time. A lot of the work and the stuff they attend to during a school day does not call for a biological smile or psychological. And many smiles are just a reaction to something they find humorous.
“Smiling at you” is non-contextual. It is a pasted-on expression children see all the time. It is the face of an older aunt who has no time for children but is trapped in a family get together as she sits with children on either side of her. It is the face of salespeople in a store who want customers to feel welcome. It is impersonal. Is Washington smiling on Mt. Rushmore? Is he smiling at us?
“Smiling for you” is how teachers invest in children. This is not whole class or group smile, but one that is just for you. The teacher knows it and you know it. It is special.
This smile is not about the teacher; it is about you. “I smile because of who you are and for what you have done and for how you are learning.” In this context, when a child sees a teacher smiling for them, the reward/motivation to keep trying, to do more, and to do it better escalates. A child who shares her math problem and solution with her classmates and gets a teacher’s smile will volunteer to do it again.
Consider all the times a teacher, coach, or director gave you a smile that said, “this one is for you.” You hoped someone at home will ask you, “How was school today” and you will tell them about getting a teacher’s smile. It feels good to tell someone about the time a teacher smiled for you.
And finally, “Smiling with you” is a co-conspiratorial glow. Teachers teach, coaches coach, and directors direct so that children will learn. Most of the time, learning is transitional and immediately leads to the next teaching, or coaching, or directing. Now and again, there is a pause. It need not be a ceremony but just long enough for a teacher and a child to stop, pay attention to something of significance that a teacher/coach/director and child have done. And smile.
The child knows that the teacher knows what and how the child is feeling at that precise time and that the child achieved that special feeling because of the teacher’s teaching. It is a look between two people that transcend words. I see co-smiling when children reach supernal moments in school. A child who masters a musical piece and performs it well because of personalized instruction. A child who uses learned technique to create an art piece that makes others stop for a second and deeper look. A child who struggled with fractions and with teacher help can achieve a perfect test score. These smiles happen all the time, but they are so personal to the child and teacher the rest of us may not notice.
I like the co-conspiratorial wording. Teaching and learning are a very personal transaction between two people.
Good teachers teach children; best teachers connect with children.
Being a lifelong schoolaphile (I make up the word), I can remember the name and instructional mannerisms of every teacher I had Kindergarten thru PhD. And across more than fifty years of schoolwork, I remember the work of hundreds of teachers and know them by name and instructional manner. As a person responsible for the quality of educational outcomes, I learned that any teacher could learn and demonstrate subject content and instructional pedagogy, but no teacher can learn to like children in school if they do not do so innately. Can it be that some teachers, deep in their personality, do not like children? Oh, yes.
I liked art as an elementary and middle school student and learned a great deal about conceptualization, perspective, color and shading, shape, and form. My teacher was a veteran who had taught the parents of many of my classmates, and every generation had the same feeling about our teacher. She was a good teacher, but she was a cold one. A petite woman, she was energetic around the classroom, often looking over our shoulders and commenting on our work. But she never connected. I still have things I created in hanging on a wall and sitting on bookshelves – I was pleased with what I learned to do but never met a “smile for you” or a “a smile with you.”
I compare her with another art teacher, an elfin man whose baggy slacks, long-sleeve shirts and vests were his signature look. He had a smile that could melt a glacier. It began in his eyes, rose in his cheeks, and lifted a grin to ear-to-ear. He never knew just how golden his “smiling for/with you” because it was his natural personality. The child in him never got in the way of his connecting with the child in each child.
The other side of his story was the hundreds of students who warmed with his smile for them. And the scores of young artists who created wonderful works that conveyed their inspiration, learned techniques, and mastered artistry. He conspired with them in their learning and they will know him forever.
The Big Dug!
Know your smiles and use them to benefit children. If you are not a smiler, not everyone is, consider changing professions. If you are a smiler, build your capacity to smile for children like the cheerleader they need and smile with children like the conspirator you want to be. Children in school deserve teachers who like them, want the best for them, and can cause them to learn.