My Poker face

You will notice that a lot of my reflections also come from stories about fifth graders. Fifth graders are BY FAR my biggest challenge in this service year, so success with them is a big confidence boost for me.


From February


When I am surrounded by my friends and family, I have a hard time keeping my heart off my sleeve. If I'm upset or worried about anything, it is written all over my face.

But in my time working with children (and special needs/at-risk children in particular) I've learned to better compartmentalize my emotions, especially the stress and anxiety that often accompanies classroom and large group management.

But I'm not perfect, and I sometimes wonder if I have a good poker face, especially when it comes to behavior management. During homework the other day, I finally got a little much needed feedback, and it happened to be from my most challenging female fifth grader.
This young woman is creative and expressive and loves to be right in the center of it all. In doing so, she sometimes pushes the envelope with the staff, and gets away with a lot of snide public commentary. When she was having some difficulty focusing during homework, we began to have a conversation about my expectations for her behavior.

I told her that I was finding myself becoming more and more frustrated with her at this time everyday and before I could go on to say that I needed her to try harder to be the mature, intelligent student I knew she could be, she stopped me mid-sentence.

"YOU'RE FRUSTRATED?!" she belted out.
"Yes. I am." I replied.
"But you don't LOOK frustrated at ALL!" she responded, hands in the air.
"Well. I am." I restated.

There it was. The best compliment I had ever received, at least from a fifth grader.

Over the past couple of weeks I've kept my poker face on. Our rapport has increased and we've worked diligently together to get the work done. 

student on left.