#OneWord2019  “Classily”: Define your actions with class

How many teachers have great classroom management, but can’t manage their own offspring? My daughter Scarlet is great. She doesn’t need all that much managing, but there are times when you wouldn’t guess her father is the “Captain of Class”. She can hang with the best of manners-missing marauders. And, I’d be lying if I didn’t mistake her for a bratty buccaneer every now and again. Due to location, Scarlet will never join the ranks of the Polite Pirates in my classroom, but that doesn’t mean she can’t share their class.

At the turn of the year I saw many people posting #OneWord2019 on Twitter. They were inspiring and motivational. It was right around this time that I made a family decision: This was going to be “The Year of Class”! I was going to bring all of my lessons on how to behave classily home from school and share them with my daughter. #OneWord2019 “CLASS” seems pretty generic, coming from someone who already writes and teaches about classy behavior all of the time.

Then it dawned on me: Class is a thing, akin to perfection. I know that my daughter’s behavior will not be perfect; I don’t want it to be flawless. I’m okay with Scarlet making mistakes. What I want to teach her is how to make them classily.

There it is! That’s the word!

Classy is full of criteria: Does it meet certain standards? Is it good enough? Through my many musings on the subject of what it means to be classy over the years I’ve come across more than one paradox. For instance, a classy person is a “man of action”… But, someone who appears to “try to hard” does not look very classy. And, the less one works, but things are happening all around him, the classier. Which is it, hard work, little work, hidden work, delegated work…? Now that I am going to be teaching my daughter, I want to be sure. I will be her teacher through more than one grade.

More than the amount of work, what type of work, or whether you work at all, the most important thing is how you conduct your work. One student writes a two-page narrative, while another punches out a paragraph. The first always writes a lot. The kid didn’t use any new skills that had been recently taught. The second student struggles to string four words together, typically. Perhaps he usually complains of not having anything to say. But this time, his attention during your descriptive writing lesson is paying off. And, the pep talk about taking pride in your work has sunk in. You can’t believe your eyes. A paragraph has blossomed on a paper without one prompting. What is a better measure of success, growth or achievement? Rather than grading the work on whether the final product was classy or not, why not grade the process on how classily it was performed?   

Here is another paradox. I make a big deal about how my students sit in class and stand in line. Posture is important to me. “Put your shoulders back and raise your chins, because you are proud,” I tell them. Am I instructing them to be proud of themselves, or do they think that they are better than other classes? Am I teaching my students to raise their chins or look down their noses? The answer is don’t make it a competition. You don’t have to be better than other people to think highly of yourself. If others are better than you at things, should you think lowly of yourself? Stand classily, regardless of your “standing” in the world. You are you; be proud. Be proud of being right there and standing nicely, if need be. 

My daughter was excited when I told her that this was going to be “The Year of Class”. I explained that I would be sharing a little of what this means each day. There have been days that Scarlet reminded me about my classy lessons. She has asked me specific questions like, “Is that classy?” These always spark fun conversations. She is taking her new task seriously…

classily.

It is apropos that I write this theme on a day when we celebrate a man who was more than a symbol of class; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is an icon of moving mountains classily. His lifelong philosophy of nonviolent protest was grounded in self-pride and showed the hard work of refusing to work. There are many reasons to honor Dr. King. In my book, he was the KING OF CLASS.

I’ve always loved the #WhoWasBookSeries for my #3rdGrade Ss, but I am super excited to share the “Who Was Martin Luther King Jr.?” book with Scarlet! We bought it @BNBuzz on Sunday. I love the excerpts. I learned where the term #JimCrowLaws came from. #CivilRights #MLKDay pic.twitter.com/1M2E3mISOf

— Matthew Weimann (@MrWeimann) January 24, 2019