Enthusiastic About Education

A Guide to Inspiring Children to Learn

By Ron Clark

Your enthusiasm will be infectious, stimulating and attractive to others. They will love you for it. They will go for you and with you. – Norman Vincent Peale (1898-1993)

I list this quality first for a reason. Nothing is more important than having enthusiasm. If you are a teacher, the students will be excited about learning a lesson if you are eager and excited about teaching it. If you are a parent, children will care about things if they see that they mean a lot to you and that you are energized by them. Children are impressionable, and when they look to adults for guidance, we must inspire them and motivate them to want to learn, to have a desire to achieve and to want to be the best person they can be.

The end-of-grade test scores are looked at very closely in North Carolina. At the end of one school year our faculty and staff were all nervous about hearing whether our school would be designated "low-performing," just "met growth" or was an "exemplary school." We were in a financially disadvantaged area and always felt that we were playing catch-up with our students, trying our best to get them on grade level. Some years we saw outstanding growth, but the students, no matter how far they came, didn't score on level. It was frustrating and demoralizing for all the teachers. Some individual teachers would get wonderful results with their students, but we didn't seem able to pull it all together as a school.

In my fourth year at Snowden Elementary, however, the entire school was named an "exemplary school." It was a huge boost to the teachers and staff, and we were all so excited that we wanted to do something to show the students how much their achievements meant to us. The ideas we came up with cost money, and since it was the end of the year, none of our plans seemed possible on such short notice. A group of us started talking about how neat it would be to have a teacher talent show as a salute to the students. We would dress up as our favorite musical stars from the '60s, '70s, '80s or '90s and lip-sync before the entire body of students from pre-kindergarten through the eighth grade. I have this thing about surprises, so we agreed that we wouldn't tell the students what was going on; we would just take them to the gym-atorium one day and give them a huge shock!

Want to see more?

• Reading Between the Lines: 10 Signs Your Child May Need a Tutor
• Ready to Read: Sparking Your Child's Interest in Books
• Get Moving! 5 Tips for Raising Active Kids
• Talk about it!