The Big Fresh September 13, 2014 Extra or Unexpected?

My colleague Jeff was worried. We were both professors at a large state university, working with juniors and seniors in literacy methods courses. One of his students, Amanda, recently lost her mother to cancer, and now she’d missed the last two classes in his secondary English methods class. He’d called her repeatedly and talked with her roommate but couldn’t reach Amanda. Finally the roommate told him Amanda was at soccer practice and would be there for another hour.  Jeff hung up the phone (because this was back in the days when phones had cords and you actually hung them up), put on his jacket, and walked 10 minutes across campus to the sports fields, where he found Amanda and told her he was worried about her. She cried a little, promised to come to the next class, and didn’t skip class again for the rest of the semester.

When Jeff told me this story, I was astonished. I rarely called students when they missed class, certainly never visited them personally at a sports practice. We talk a lot about doing “extra” as educators, but Jeff made me realize the unexpected is what has the biggest impact.

Og Mandino once wrote, “The only certain means of success is to render more and better service than is expected of you, no matter what your task may be.”

Joe Clark explains the way “more and better” works for administrators: “People expect school administrators to be at the Friday night football game. They don’t expect them to bring Popsicles to band camp. Or go to the bowling team’s match or the Mock Trial team’s performance.”

We do a lot of the “extra,” but maybe we need more of the unexpected. Most of us don’t have more to give. Maybe it’s a matter of surprising people with the unexpected in a way that truly makes them rethink their relationship with us, and our commitment to their work.

This week we look at finding writing topics. Plus more as always — enjoy!

Free for All

Here are two different takes from the archives on helping students write.