This is an article that needs to be repeated:<\/p>\n
Every Friday afternoon Chase\u2019s teacher asks her students to take out a piece of paper and write down the names of four children with whom they\u2019d like to sit the following week. The children know that these requests may or may not be honored. She also asks the students to nominate one student whom they believe has been an exceptional classroom citizen that week. All ballots are privately submitted to her.<\/p>\n
And every single Friday afternoon, after the students go home, Chase\u2019s teacher takes out those slips of paper, places them in front of her and studies them. She looks for patterns.<\/p>\n
Who is not getting requested by anyone else?<\/p>\n
Who doesn\u2019t even know who to request?<\/p>\n
Who never gets noticed enough to be nominated?<\/p>\n
Who had a million friends last week and none this week?<\/p>\n
You see, Chase\u2019s teacher is not looking for a new seating chart or \u201cexceptional citizens.\u201d Chase\u2019s teacher is looking for lonely children. She\u2019s looking for children who are struggling to connect with other children. She\u2019s identifying the little ones who are falling through the cracks of the class\u2019s social life. She is discovering whose gifts are going unnoticed by their peers. And she\u2019s pinning down- right away- who\u2019s being bullied and who is doing the bullying.<\/p>\n
As a teacher, parent, and lover of all children \u2013 I think that this is the most brilliant Love Ninja strategy I have ever encountered. It\u2019s like taking an X-ray of a classroom to see beneath the surface of things and into the hearts of students. It is like mining for gold \u2013 the gold being those little ones who need a little help \u2013 who need adults to step in and TEACH them how to make friends, how to ask others to play, how to join a group, or how to share their gifts with others. And it\u2019s a bully deterrent because every teacher knows that bullying usually happens outside of her eyeshot \u2013 and that often kids being bullied are too intimidated to share. But as she said \u2013 the truth comes out on those safe, private, little sheets of paper.<\/p>\n
As Chase\u2019s teacher explained this simple, ingenious idea \u2013 I stared at her with my mouth hanging open. \u201cHow long have you been using this system?\u201d I said.
\nEver since Columbine, she said. Every single Friday afternoon since Columbine.
\nGood Lord.<\/p>\n
This brilliant woman watched Columbine knowing that ALL VIOLENCE BEGINS WITH DISCONNECTION. All outward violence begins as inner loneliness. She watched that tragedy KNOWING that children who aren\u2019t being noticed will eventually resort to being noticed by any means necessary.<\/p>\n
And so she decided to start fighting violence early and often, and with the world within her reach. What Chase\u2019s teacher is doing when she sits in her empty classroom studying those lists written with shaky 11 year old hands – is SAVING LIVES. I am convinced of it. She is saving lives.<\/p>\n
And what this mathematician has learned while using this system is something she really already knew: that everything \u2013 even love, even belonging \u2013 has a pattern to it. And she finds those patterns through those lists \u2013 she breaks the codes of disconnection. And then she gets lonely kids the help they need. It\u2019s math to her. It\u2019s MATH.<\/p>\n
All is love – even math. Amazing.<\/p>\n
Chase\u2019s teacher retires this year \u2013 after decades of saving lives. What a way to spend a life: looking for patterns of love and loneliness. Stepping in, every single day- and altering the trajectory of our world.<\/p>\n
TEACH ON, WARRIORS. You are the first responders, the front line, the disconnection detectives, and the best and ONLY hope we\u2019ve got for a better world. What you do in those classrooms when no one is watching- it\u2019s our best hope.<\/p>\n
Copied for inspiration to save more children.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is an article that needs to be repeated: Every Friday afternoon Chase\u2019s teacher asks her students to take out a piece of paper and write down the names of four children with whom they\u2019d like to sit the following week. The children know that these requests may or may not be honored. She also … <\/p>\n