Patience

Patience is a virtue is a Proverb quote. What does that really mean in education? The Association for Middle-Level Education (AMLE) has an article titled Patient and Tenacious Teaching by Rick Wormeli https://www.amle.org/patient-and-tenacious-teaching/#:~:text=Patience%20to%20Build%20Prior%20Knowledge,to%20something%20already%20in%20storage. States that patience is the most powerful tool with have. It is difficult to use patience in a classroom that is pressurized to accomplish so much in a day and in the year. But as an educator, it is most useful to be patient when students are processing information.

Just google patience in education and the search comes over 1 billion results. So, it is important in education. Why do we have a difficult time implementing it? I think the short answer is that it is hard. When you know you only have 30 minutes to accomplish the lesson, you focus on the parts the students need to know. You don’t have time to be patient for each and every child to process all the components. You can’t hold up the whole class because a few children needed more time. You figure you will come back so those children can understand that procedure. In our curricula, it spirals back for those particular reasons. If a child did not get the skill the first time it will come up throughout the year so, he/she will get it by the end of the year. Many times, for students it does not work that way in how they process information. Everyone processes information differently and we need to be patient with each one. We need to allow them the time to process.

We must have patience and allow the students the time to process. Many times, it is called “Think time” or “wait time”. But how many times we are using those techniques for a student and other students get frustrated? The situation that happens usually is another child is frustrated by waiting and someone shouts out the answer. Or the teacher says do you want some help? Of course, the child will say yes to get out from under peer pressure. Or they answer quickly, and the teacher says that is not correct. Most definitely in the classroom, we are not patient and the faster is better. But is it really learning?

Patience teaches us how to be respectful to others. It lowers the pressure in the classroom. It also lowers the stress that when a question is asked every student has to have the answer right away. How do we create patience when teaching?

There are many ideas on the web, but the top three encourage patience. Listening, accepting, and waiting. In our classrooms, we need to be expert listeners on so many levels. We need to listen to what the child is really saying and understand. So, then we are able to plan appropriately for him/her. We need to accept each and everyone in the classroom. We need to really show that each child is cared for and loved. Even the difficult ones. We need to be patient and wait for the child to process the information on his/her timeline, not ours.

If we can listen more intently, accept everyone in our classroom, and wait patiently for children to process we will have academically successful children. It takes practice to be patient, but it has so many rewards. Patience is a virtue even in our classrooms.