Shackleton: Lighten Up!

'Effective leaders find ways of building celebration into the culture of their organizations.'

 In my high school, there was one teacher in particular who was popular amongst every student. This was especially abnormal at my school because it was the norm for students to hate every single teacher, or even if some students liked one teacher, it didn't necessarily mean that everybody did. Anyways, aside from the fact that that teacher was actually pretty good at teaching, he always had parties after  midterms or for occasions such as Christmas. He would bring in cakes he bought at Costco with a stack of American snacks he knew we loved. After this became a somewhat culture for his classes, us students were actually motivated to work harder because we knew what awaited us in the end. Strangely enough, they showed in our test results as well. Out of six classes that took the same test, he taught two of them and alwaysalways, those two classes were the ones that had the highest average scores. The attitudes of the students were different as well. Another thing that was the norm in my high school was sleeping during class. During this teacher's classes, almost(lol) no one was sleeping. Instead, we would shout out answers, ask questions and actually participate in class. I don't know if it was in this teacher's intentions or not but it honestly did work. As much as motivating us to study harder, I personally also nurtured a sense of belonging in his class. I think it's usual for students to hang out only in their cliques but when you have parties, it makes it easier to mingle with people you usually don't talk to. Then ultimately there is a sense of unity in the whole class.

This isn't the end though...

I had this teacher for two years and towards the end, the students including myself started expecting him to have parties which made everything a bit tricky. Our high motivations started decaying and our spirits during class soon were no where to be found.

'Normality' is really a terrifying thing...I think it's a sense of balance that is needed in this case.