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He started to really focus on the things that we were doing.
His mom came and told me one day, he's working out at home.
Well, I never asked him to do that.
What the heck is going on here?
You've got to understand, my community,
track was not a big deal.
Baseball and softball was in the newspaper and I had to beg
the paper to carry track results.
I had to practically come and put them in the paper myself
to get them there.
They just didn't care that much about it.
Nobody came to our meets, his parents didn't come
to his meets, his friends weren't on the track team
and yet this guy is working really hard.
I'm thinking what's going on here?
Well, the culmination of this story and why it stands out in
my mind is that we were coming up to a dual meet one day.
And if you've been in sports or associated with sports
like track or tennis or swimming or some of those where you have
dual meets, you know that a dual meet, you don't really care
if you win or not, you're really just interested in letting
people try to improve their personal best.
You want them to go out there, face competition from other
people than their teammates and see how they do.
You kind of want to test them out, get a feel for what
your team looks like.
Those kinds of things.
Well, this sophomore had not really done very well
during the season.
He improved readily but he still wasn't one of our best
performers and he didn't get into the invitational meets.
He wasn't one of the top performers to get into
the invitational meets and he came up to me at this dual meet
and he said, hey coach I understand that there's
nobody in the 3200 today.
I said yeah that's right.
He said, put me in it.
And I kind of laughed.
I said no, no, you need to go get ready for the shot put
and he said no seriously coach, there's nobody in it.
I haven't really gotten any points for the team.
This is my chance.
Put me in it.
I said are you serious?
Do you know that's eight laps around the track and he said
yeah, put me in.
And I want to tell you absolutely, completely honest,
he is the only person I ever saw finish the 3200 with a smile
on his face.
He ran every step of those eight laps.
I also say, the people who remember that event are probably
me and him and our opposing coach because the whole track
meet stopped while he was on the track because we couldn't
do any other events.
But he felt really good about that.
He contributed something and what stood out was he didn't
want to run it at all.
Now he's running eight laps around the track.
What changed about him?
His sense of respect for who he was and what he could do.
You know what, that changed in a few minutes each day and that's
why I told the story.
It changed in a few minutes each day because you see,
it transformed his perspective about who he was and what
he could do those few moments.
It transformed his perspective.
He started to do better in my English class too.
He had generally been a C student and had felt like that
was good enough.
Once track season got going and he started to improve,
his grades got better too.
Not because I bugged him any different, it's because
he started to believe that he could do it.
He started to value himself and say you know what,
I'm worth it and isn't that what we want?
Okay, you had a question.
(female speaker). My opinion how did he balance
with you being at school with those students [unclear audio].
I had a student earlier in this semester where by Wednesday,
we had him going strong.
He was doing great, Friday he was pumped,
he was doing wonderful.
We got him back Monday and it was just,
we started all over again.
How do you balance?
(Dr. Kestner). First question, how much
of that can you control?
(female speaker). Just when he's at school.
(Dr. Kestner). Okay, so that's what you do.
You have to hope that over time, you'll make a difference.
And you may never know if you did or not.
I will tell another story.
My wife and I were in Walmart one day and one
of my former students came up to me.
I didn't even see her come up and she said oh Mr. Kestner.
I really enjoyed your class, it made such a difference to me.
You're a great teacher, blah blah blah.
She went on and on.
She walked away and my wife said, wow, that must have been
one of your good students.
I said she took the class twice.
She failed and the second time around, she didn't do great,
she passed but I made a difference for her.
You know what, I didn't even see her coming.
She could have walked away without ever saying
anything to me.
She felt the need to come and talk to me.
That meant something to me.
Too often, we don't get that.
I don't know how many other students I hope that I reach
who never had said anything to her.
And you'll never know either from most of your students.
But you've got to keep going, believing that you can do it
and you also do have to hold them accountable.
One of the dangers that I get in doing this is I'm trying
to counter the rewards and punishments.
I have a classroom management system, I am strict like you
would not believe.
Okay, I have very high expectations, I have very clear
guidelines and I enforce them just like that.
My students come to know, that's expected.
But they get two messages at once.
I don't let kids off the hook because I don't want to hurt
their feelings.
I want to help them to build up.
Sometimes people will take this message to mean well we can't
discipline our students.
I don't want anybody to get that, that message.
I feel like I have to say that so nobody gets the wrong idea.
Combined with the traditional classroom management.
Folks, pick up a textbook from 1950 and pick up a textbook from
today and most of the classroom management techniques
are exactly the same.
Why?
They work for most of the students, most of the time.
What I'm talking about is when you have a challenge,
when you have a student whose just down there,
who just doesn't seem to respond, who just doesn't feel
like they're going to come out of it.
Do some of this stuff and you've got another strategy.
I talked about a toolkit at the beginning and I'm not trying
to give you another tool.
I'm trying to give you a new perspective on how to use
the ones you already have.
Think about how you structure your curriculum.
How do you progress students through your curriculum
and how could you do that with respect?
How could you do that with discipline?
How could you do that with responsibility?
Try something.
If it doesn't seem applicable to your situation, e-mail me
and I'll show you why it is.
Okay, other questions?
Thank you so much for your attention.
[audience applause].
[no dialogue].