Adrian's Top Five

Here are five of pieces of advice for my fifth-graders.

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

At the end of the school year, our fifth-graders participate in a faux-graduation ceremony called 5th Grade Continuation. I’ve worked in schools where the continuation ceremony is huge, hosting family, and extended family, and extended, extended family. At my current school, our continuation is a more intimate affair. I gather my students and their parents in the library for a short speech and pass out their continuation certificates.

I love Commencement Addresses. I usually start watching them in early May, rewatching some of my favorites, including Steve Jobs, Michelle Obama, Reid Hoffman, Matthew McConaughey, Stacey Y. Abrams, John Krasinski, Toni Morrison, Conan O'Brien, and Zadie Smith (just to name a few!).

In that spirit, at the end of every school year, before I pass out their certificates, I give my fifth grade students five pieces of advice before going to middle school.

Here is one last lecture for my students.

1. Be Genuine and Believe in Yourself

When I was first interviewing for teaching positions, I received a lot of rejections. Each interviewing team seemed to be looking for something different. The feedback I received from one school was that I was not confident enough in my burgeoning abilities as a novice teacher. On my next interview, I tried to exhibit more confidence. Their feedback: too much confidence from such a young teacher.

I reached out to a mentor who helped me through my student teaching practicum. He told me that overconfidence or lack of confidence is in the eyes of the perceiver. He said, be genuine and believe in yourself. Once I began to share my passion for teaching and by desire to learn how to always be a better teacher, I was hired.

My students have received a lot of negative feedback during their time in elementary school. Some have become so calloused by how they were treated, that they cannot be their true selves for fear of rejection or retaliation. They carry around a heavy set of armor that prevents them from trusting others and being themselves. Before they leave the fifth grade, I want my students to know that they never need to sacrifice their true self for anyone. Not their teacher, parents, or friends. Middle school is an awkward time spent trying to learn who you are as a person. Students try fitting in with different character tropes and group cliques to discover themselves. Instead, I want them to stay true to their core values and beliefs. I want them to be genuine and believe in themselves, especially when others are telling them to change who they are.

2. Be Kind

I tell my students that being kind to others costs you nothing. Having empathy for others goes a long way in helping someone through a hard time. Did you know that it only takes 8 minutes of support to help someone get back on track? Everyone can afford to spend 8 minutes helping someone in need. It doesn’t matter how smart you are, you can afford to help a classmate who is struggling with their classwork. It doesn’t matter how strong you are, you can afford to help a teacher carry boxes to their classroom. All that matters is the size of your heart and how you use it. There is an abundance of love and kindness to go around. Don’t hoard it. Be kind.

3. Work Hard

Arnold Schwarzenegger says, “If there is one unavoidable truth in this world, it’s that there is no substitute for putting in the work. Working your ass off is the only thing that works 100 percent of the time for 100 percent of the things worth achieving.”

I’ve always tried to follow this maxim. My German-immigrant grandmother was the hardest working person, I’ve ever met. She showed me, through example, the satisfaction of working hard and fully completing jobs. She never half-assed anything! As a teenage athlete, I was not the strongest nor fastest, but my work ethic set me apart from my teammates. I put my head down and got to work. In every aspect of my life, both personal and professional, I try to give 100 percent.

I want my students to know that, as much as I’ve tried to make learning fun this year, they need to roll up their sleeves, experience some discomfort, and work hard in school. No one is going to hand them anything. They will need to work hard for it.

4. Ask Questions

Most people attribute the adage, Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood to Steven Covey and his 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Habit 5). However, in 1912, St. Francis of Assisi wrote in the 'Belle prière à faire pendant la messe', “Grant that I may not so much seek... to be understood, as to understand.”

The best way to understand others is by asking questions. Warren Berger writes in A More Beautiful Question, “many breakthrough ideas or new ways of thinking can be traced back to a beautiful question.” So, what makes a question beautiful?

A beautiful question is an ambitious yet actionable question that can begin to shift the way we perceive or think about something, that might serve as a catalyst to bring about change.

Warren Berger

This year, I have taught my students to ask questions. It is not something that comes easily to fifth-graders. Preschool kids ask their parents an average of 100 questions a day. By the time they reach middle school, students stop asking questions.

Swiss Psychologist, Jean Piaget, categorized child development into four stages.

1. Sensorimotor intelligence

2. Preoperational thinking

3. Concrete operational thinking

4. Formal operational thinking.

Each stage is correlated with an age period of childhood. Fifth-graders (ages 10-11) are in the concrete operational stage. Here they begin to understand that their thoughts are unique to them and that not everyone else necessarily shares their thoughts, feelings, and opinions. Fifth-graders LOVE sharing their opinions, whether you want to hear it or not! This can often cause conflict with others because it is difficult for them to understand that someone else has a different opinion. This is why I encourage questioning in my classroom. Instead of trying to get others to agree with you, asking questions helps us better understand differing viewpoints. I want my students to ask questions when they are confused or emotional. Instead of giving up when they don’t understand something in class, asking specific questions will help them better understand the concept, and communicate to their teachers that they want to understand. Instead of breaking off a friendship because they don’t understand why their friend acted in a certain way, asking questions builds empathy with others by helping them get to know their friend better. As ee cummings states,

Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.

Introduction to New Poems (1938)

5. Never Give Up

Success never comes in huge leaps; it takes consistent work. It’s a myth that learning is a straight line from Point A to B. Learning is messy. There are going to be falls and times when you want to give up. Adam Grant, author of Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things describes how comfort grows as you practice your skills. We may think that learning happens in a linear way from knowledge to progress, but in fact, learning is circuitous.

From Hidden Potential by Adam Grant

Learning requires discomfort and discomfort is not fun, especially for long periods of time. Students (and adults too!) want to accelerate their learning so as to lessen their discomfort.¹ The truth is that there are no shortcuts in learning. The temptation to give up thinking and let a computer do it for you is strong. The process of learning, through incremental steps, is more valuable than quickly getting to the answer. We all want to be able to plug into the Matrix and quickly download new skills and knowledge. But there is more value it working hard and never giving up.

Theodore Roosevelt said, “Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.” I believe that effort beats talent every single day. I tell my students that if they work hard every day, they will be successful in middle school, and in life.

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The end of this school year will be bittersweet. I’m looking forward to sending my students off to their next stage in life. Even though this particular group drove me crazy, exhausting me and challenging everything I did as a teacher, I’m going to miss them. I’m going to worry about how they are doing as they get older. I hope these last pieces of advice resonate with them and that they can look back on their fifth-grade year with fondness. Maybe I will have taught them something after all.

Have a great week!

— Adrian

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Resources

Here are some extra videos that go along with each piece of advice I give my students.

• Evan Carmichael shares his insights on overcoming limiting personal beliefs that hold many back from achieving their dreams.

• Be Kind by Pat Zietlow Miller is a wonderful picture book. I love reading aloud to my students. Fifth-graders are never too old to enjoy a good picture book!

• You probably can’t show this one to your students, but it is a good compilation of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s speech, “Work Your Ass Off” from his book, Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life.

• This Big Think video with Warren Berger is a great introduction to his book, A More Beautiful Question. Here is a book trailer that I love as well.

• Want to know your Inquiry Quotient? Take Berger’s quiz.

• Need a little motivational pick-me-up for your students? Or for yourself? I love this Sia music video!

Last, but not least, here is a compilation of some great commencement speeches.

1. I’m seeing a lot of this with the discussion of AI in public education. For more intelligent discussion of AI and education, I recommend reading Marc Watkins’ Rhetorica. He recently wrote a piece titled The Enduring Role of Writing in an AI Era. In it, he discusses our history of offloading the labor of writing to algorithms.