Dari Spotten Set The Bar High For Her Students
Dari Spotten taught second grade at Jefferson Elementary School in Davenport, IA back in the early nineties.
Tall, trim, Caucasian, black haired, and in her late twenties, Spotten had a reputation for being a bit of a taskmaster in an at-risk, minority dominated school with all the bells and whistles.
She was unafraid to set the bar high, and was equally unafraid to help her kids learn to jump over it.
That meant Ms.
Spotten was not only held in high regard by her kids, but by her fellow teachers, school administrators, and parents.
But when Ms.
Spotten meant business, there was never any question that she meant business.
Kindergartens Through Second Grades I happen to have been a counselor employed by a State at-risk grant at the time, and one of my jobs was to oversee Operation Pull Your Own Weight, a fitness oriented self-esteem project that showed kids how to get physically strong and to simultaneously avoid obesity by learning to do conventional pull ups.
OPYOW covered all the kindergarten, first and second grade classrooms in Jefferson School.
All combined there were between 12 and 15 classes involved.
And all but one classroom teacher recruited two parent volunteers to come in twice a week to put their kids through their PYOW paces.
The Lone Exception The lone exception you might guess, was Ms.
Spotten who decided that her kids needed to learn to pull their own weight physically and in lots of other ways.
As the result, she also decided that her kids didn't need adult supervision to run the PYOW program.
They could do it on their own while she graded papers.
They Stood on Chairs They stood on chairs to change the height of the height adjustable pull up bar.
They filled out each chart for every participant every workout, every week of the school year.
They encouraged one another, gave each other high fives, and in the end they were just as good at pull ups as the rest of the classes, all of whom had adult supervision.
They Were Even Better In one regard however, Ms.
Spotten's kids were better than all the rest, because they took responsibility for running the program themselves.
In this day and age of finger pointing and laying blame on anyone but oneself, Dari Spotten taught her kids to pull their own weight and to take responsibility for themselves in all sorts of ways, including learning to do conventional pull ups.
A more valuable lesson would be hard to imagine.
Tall, trim, Caucasian, black haired, and in her late twenties, Spotten had a reputation for being a bit of a taskmaster in an at-risk, minority dominated school with all the bells and whistles.
She was unafraid to set the bar high, and was equally unafraid to help her kids learn to jump over it.
That meant Ms.
Spotten was not only held in high regard by her kids, but by her fellow teachers, school administrators, and parents.
But when Ms.
Spotten meant business, there was never any question that she meant business.
Kindergartens Through Second Grades I happen to have been a counselor employed by a State at-risk grant at the time, and one of my jobs was to oversee Operation Pull Your Own Weight, a fitness oriented self-esteem project that showed kids how to get physically strong and to simultaneously avoid obesity by learning to do conventional pull ups.
OPYOW covered all the kindergarten, first and second grade classrooms in Jefferson School.
All combined there were between 12 and 15 classes involved.
And all but one classroom teacher recruited two parent volunteers to come in twice a week to put their kids through their PYOW paces.
The Lone Exception The lone exception you might guess, was Ms.
Spotten who decided that her kids needed to learn to pull their own weight physically and in lots of other ways.
As the result, she also decided that her kids didn't need adult supervision to run the PYOW program.
They could do it on their own while she graded papers.
They Stood on Chairs They stood on chairs to change the height of the height adjustable pull up bar.
They filled out each chart for every participant every workout, every week of the school year.
They encouraged one another, gave each other high fives, and in the end they were just as good at pull ups as the rest of the classes, all of whom had adult supervision.
They Were Even Better In one regard however, Ms.
Spotten's kids were better than all the rest, because they took responsibility for running the program themselves.
In this day and age of finger pointing and laying blame on anyone but oneself, Dari Spotten taught her kids to pull their own weight and to take responsibility for themselves in all sorts of ways, including learning to do conventional pull ups.
A more valuable lesson would be hard to imagine.
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