Help Your Littles!

Studying Elementary Education (ElEd) is SO fun, and a lot of people think it’s a wimpy major because all we do is make puppets and sing our ABCs. We do make puppets, and we figure out how to make a list of letters fun, but such activities only constitute about 15% of our education (I always tell people that ElEd is really a child psychology degree with an emphasis in management and an emphasis in teaching). One area of the classroom that we focus on is management (how to appropriately promote prosocial behavior in the classroom through incentives, yada, yada, yada). These management skills have shaped how I would like to interact with my students as well as with my future children, so every now and then I will be sharing some of the skills that I have picked up so far.

Food for thought: DON’T USE CONTRACTIONS! (that sentence is supposed to be ironic). Think about it. When was the first time anyone explained to you that you can combine words to save time? First grade? Second grade? Up until that point, adults kept telling you that you “should”, “can”, and “wo” do things, but they would always add these funny sounds to the end that just did not belong on the end of a word, and you really did not understand what the verb “wo” was... When you tell your kid “Don’t run” the only word in that command that they really understand before you introduce body language is “run”, so naturally they respond the way they understand (by running). So, the next time your kid is doing something that they should not be doing, don’t take the shortcut (😉), use your big people words because your littles might understand you better!