One Teacher's Friday Ritual

Some of you may have seen him in the Twitter world, John Berray, a math teacher from Santee (check out his blog: http://johnberray.wordpress.com/). I read one of his posts, "My Friday Ritual," where he writes about the fun stuff he does between classes on a Friday, and like the sub-title of his blog, tries to "make math class awesome." Every week, Berray chooses one or two students, who have shown him something notable. This can be something like a student asked good questions, improved greatly, or showed consistent hard-work. This could also be something like a student helped another with an academic or life problem or stood up for a peer. Berray creates a slideshow that he plays between classes, complete with music!

Example of one slide:


His rationale for doing this is that the students "deserve more attention than they get." As teachers, we are often the people who get to interact with young people the most, so we should praise them. Something else interesting that Berray noted was how having to pick students every week made him a better teacher. Usually deciding on which student to choose is easy, but when it's not, that's good. During those times, he gets to dig deeper and find something positive about everyone. He has to be reflective about his students and get to know them better. The lessons get to be tailored more and more to the students' interests and skill-levels. Anything to make the school day more exciting, make the students feel good, and help the teachers design better lessons should be a wonderful adaptation. I love this idea!