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It seems that
one year, there was a class of students who were so unruly that they
burned out two different teachers. One teacher took early
retirement and the other decided to get out of teaching
altogether. This class was so bad that substitute teachers
began to refuse to take it. So the district called a teacher
who had applied for a job but hadn't made the cut that year.
They asked her if she would be willing to come in and finish out the
year in return for the promise of a full-time position the next
year. She eagerly accepted.
The principal
decided not to warn the teacher about the class, afraid that she
would be scared off if she heard what she was up against.
After the new teacher had been on the job for a month, the principal
sat in on a class to see how things were going. To his
amazement, the students were well-behaved and enthusiastic.
After the students had filed out of the classroom, the principal
stayed behind to congratulate the teacher on a job well done.
She thanked him but insisted that he deserved thanks for giving her
such a special class, such a great class, for her first
assignment. The principal hemmed and hawed and told her that
he really didn't deserve any thanks.
She laughed
and told him, "You see, I discovered your little secret on my
first day here. I looked in the desk drawer and found the list
of the students' IQ scores.
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"I knew I had a challenging group
of kids here, so bright and rambunctious that I would really have to
work to make school interesting for them because they are so
intelligent." She slid the drawer open and the principal
saw the list with the students' names and the numbers 136, 145, 127,
128, and so on written next to the names.
He exclaimed,
"Those aren't their IQ scores--those are their locker
numbers!" Too late. The teacher had already
expected the students to be bright and gifted--and they had
responded positively to her positive view and her positive handling
of them.
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