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Teaching Secrets: What Kids Wish Teachers Knew

By Laurie Wasserman

I was in our building a few weeks before school began, setting my room up for the new year. My friend and colleague was doing the same in her room, accompanied by her daughter Talia, now a high school sophomore, who enjoys helping Mom get ready for her new students.

Talia looked on as we freshened up our classrooms and began to reflect on her own middle school memories. We soon sat down for a spontaneous chat, and I asked her to talk from a student’s perspective about what middle school had been like for her. With those years still fresh in her memory, Talia offfered some candid insights from the other side of the teacher’s desk.

Talia adored her 8th grade U.S. history teacher, who engaged each of his classes in creating a classroom constitution during the first weeks of school. They wrote laws that needed to be followed and created ways to amend them as needed. Talia talked of his dedication to making learning fun and interesting by creating hands-on learning opportunities. Then she shared some other stories—about the foreign language teacher who put so much effort into her lessons, demonstrating a deep dedication to her subject, and the memorable science teacher who set up intriguing labs and projects that made Talia eager to come...