Developmental Designs approach

The Difference a Word Can Make

by Edna Attias

It never fails to amaze me how some words can be taken so literally by middle school kids. Yet, as a teacher, I don’t always think of capitalizing on it. Each year, when I start a new advisory I wonder how am I going to get my students to bond and connect with one another. How am I going to build a community in which they learn to care about each other rather than a fragmented group of individuals who end up bickering and then paying lip service during advisory? I believe cultivating a community is essential to meeting my students’ needs for productive relationships. My hope is that they will be able to work together across genders, race, and socioeconomic backgrounds without the need for cliques and bullies, and that they will come to accept each other without categorizing or making judgments. In other words, they become like members of a family.

Raindrops and Torn Flesh

Ann Larson Ericson

What power we educators wield in the words we choose and how we choose to deliver those words. Our words, tone, and body language have a profound positive or negative influence on our students. Developmental Designs names seven “raindrops” in teacher language—ways of speaking to our students that we try to avoid. These raindrops are guilt, manipulation, voice-overs, verbosity, excessive praise, blaming, and sarcasm. When we see ourselves using this language, we are open to working on our personal raindrops—except for one: sarcasm.