The Real Lesson

Every once in a while, I have a moment of accidental brilliance with clearly divine origins.

Vocabulary is a big deal to me. I read research quite a while ago that said the biggest difference between inner city students who succeed and those who don't boils down to two things: parent involvement (duh) and a strong vocabulary. Having good words at your disposal changes not only your communication but your thinking. When you learn the word "vague", you start noticing vagueness around you and want clarification. When you know the words "irritated" and "distraught" and the subtle difference between them, you can recognize each in your friends and know better how to help them.

My middle school students learn eight good vocabulary words a quarter – strong, useful, prevalent words that I think will impact their communication in positive ways if they know, understand, and use them. (That may not sound like much -- but by the end of middle school, that gives them almost 100 valuable words that they really, really know, as opposed to scads of words they had to memorize for a test and immediately forgot.)

On their home days on Wednesdays, I will give them an assignment to use one of those words – often in an interaction with people around the house. Not only does this start pushing the words into their active word bank, but it gets them having interesting (or at least entertaining) conversations with their parents and siblings.

Last week, the word was “amiable”. I told them to spend the day being intentionally amiable with everyone at home. Then in Google Classroom, they needed to tell me what exactly they did to be amiable and how everyone reacted to their amiability. And ohhhh, the responses I got:

“My behavior was different because I wasn’t always criticizing everyone like usual, and that felt good.”

“My mom responded by wanting to help me with my math, and we got done quicker.”

“When I act amiable to other people, they are more willing to help me out when I need something.”

“The difference it made was that people were more AMIABLE to me and reciprocated my actions and emotions towards them.”

“Almost everybody in my family asked me why I was being so nice. It was weird, and I’m going to try to be more like that.”

“My mood improved when I was trying to be amiable. When you get mad you think bad thoughts, but when you do good you think good thoughts.”

“I think I will try to spend more time with my family on home days.”

Wow.

Learning that the word “amiable” means “friendly and pleasant” – yeah, I think that’s a valuable lesson for my students.

But learning that being pleasant affects your own self as much as the others around you . . . that people generally react to kindness with more kindness . . . that you have power to shape the environments you live and work in with a small gesture or gentle remark . . . that attitude is a choice you can make, that you do not have to be a victim of your moods or make others a victim of them . . .

THAT is priceless.