Can you concentrate when you are hungry? Can you be nice to people when you are upset over something? Can you make wise decisions when you are depressed?

Personally, when I am hungry I can’t concentrate and I get irritable. When I am upset, I cannot fake it and be nice to people. When I am depressed, I usually put off making important decisions.

So this is me as an adult dealing with these issues. What if we shift the focus to children? How would they deal with such things? How would they act and react? As an adult, I am fortunate that I have some control over the things that happened in my life. What about the children, do they have control?

Being an educator, I know too well how hunger, depression, and anger affects my students’ daily performance at school. And because of this perspective, I am able to provide the following things for my children, which at least helps them deal with the obstacles that they face daily outside the home and at school.

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It’s Monday morning and you are summoned. Your boss informs you that in order to improve your company’s production, your company will use a new computer program. Your task is to introduce the new program to the entire company and you’re mandated to have 75% employee comprehension of the new program by the end of your presentation.

You plan your lecture and you discover that in order to effectively execute your seminar, you need certain supplies, like an LCD projector and 30 computers. Unfortunately, your boss says that he can only provide 20 computers and no LCD projector.

You modify your presentation and make do with the available supplies. Since there are 180 employees, you and your boss agree to divide the employees into groups of 30, which will result into 6 forty-five minute sessions for the entire day.

You are excited and prepared for your first session. But before your lesson could start, one of your colleagues, colleague A, starts disrupting the group with crude jokes. Everyone laughs. You try to do your best to ignore him but every time you continue with your lesson, he interrupts and makes strange noises.

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If one of your friends or co-workers stink would you tell them?

This topic came up when my wife and I gave a ride to one of her clients; her clients were husband and wife. The husband reeked!

When they got off the car, my wife and I got into a long conversation of when and how it’s appropriate to tell someone that their BO is kickin’ it. Of course being the wimp that I am, I said that I probably won’t have the courage to tell anyone that they smell. Case in point, I have friends who smell but I have never had the courage to say anything.

My wife, on the other hand, can be brutally honest when she wants to be. She said outright that she will say something if she knows the person well enough. And, she gave me names of our friends and her co-workers whom she had spoken with about their stinkyself.

Now that I know what two adults will do with this dilemma. I was curious as to what children will do when they are in this situation. On our way home last Monday, I decided to pose the question to Nikki, my resident 11 year old expert on religion, politics, and life in general. 

“Nikki, if one of your friends or your teachers, or aunts smells badly, would you tell them that they stink.” I asked.

She paused for about 10 seconds, taps her left index finger on her chin and said, “I don’t think I will say anything.”

“Why not?” I said.

“Well, Daddy, what if I say something and hurt their feelings? Plus it’s rude!” She exclaimed.

“So are you telling me that you would rather suffer the horrible smell, even if it is giving you a headache and will make you throw up, than tell a person that they stink?”

After my statement, she looked at me and said, “Yes I would.”

I wish I could be like my wife and be honest with friends and colleagues but I can’t. Like Nikki, I would rather suffer the stench than hurt someone’s feelings.

But, come to think of it, if I was the one who’s projecting malodorous body aroma, I would want someone to tell me so that I can at least put some cologne or deodorant. How come it’s so difficult to let someone know that they stink?

What about you? Would you say anything?

A college student of mine recounted the time when he was constantly rediculed for being overweight. Obviously, he didn’t like this very much. He felt isolated and singled out because he was the only one who was overweight in his class.

However, he said that if he was born 20 years later with the same weight problem, he would have been in a better situation. No one would have made fun of him and he would have been just one of the guys. How is this possible? The answer is simple.

Students across America are fat and they are growing in numbers.

Experts estimate that 1 in 5 children between 6 and 17 years of age are overweight. That’s a 14% increase since 1971. At that continued rate of growth by the year 2045, the percentage will be almost 30. That means that 1 out of 3 children will be obese. (Tom Laux)

So how did we ever get to this point?

Our children learn through examples. They say what we say and they do what we do. If we eat unhealthy, they will eat unhealthy. If we do not exercise, they will not exercise. (Laux 2008) The combination of inactivity and unhealthy eating habits has brought us to this point. A point where childhood obesity has reached an epidemic proportion.

We have failed to take care of our children’s health. Doctors and dieticians have warned us before that childhood obesity will lead to heart disease, diabetes, and other ailments like back and knee pain. But unfortunately we didn’t listen. We were just too busy to mind the most important thing in our lives, our children’s health.

So the questions remain. Why do we allow our children to eat unhealthy food? Why do we shower them with toys that promote inactivity? Why do we let our school system reduce the number P.E. classes and recess? Why do we contiue to live an unhealthy lifestyle?

There are many answers and excuses to these questions but we must not waste time debating over them. What we need to do is to focus on the solution. So the question that we need to answer now is how we can fix the problem of childhood obesity? How do we reverse the trend?

As a parent I can do 3 things: I can provide home cook meal. I can provide physical activities or limit their television and video game use; and I can pack their lunch, thus limiting their exposure to unhealthy food.

As a teacher, I can also do 3 things: I can teach my students and their parents about healthy eating habits; I can convince my principal to add more P.E. classes and recess; and I can make sure that the lunch being served is healthy.

Of course there is more to be done, but I can start with these 6 things. If I can’t reverse the childhood obesity trend in our country, I could at least reverse it with my own children and students.

What about you, what can you do?

There are 7 things that I wish I knew before becoming a teacher.  Like in any profession, knowing these 7 pitfalls of teaching before becoming one would have made my first years as an educator much easier.

As a new teacher, I was motivated, determined, and ready to improve the lives of my students. I thought that no one could stop me. I was oblivious to the challenges that were before me. Even if I knew these obstacles, it didn’t matter because as I stated, I was motivated, determined, and ready.

So, if someone shared these 7 things with me ahead of time, perhaps I could have gotten more sleep and less gray hair. Obviously everything is much clearer and simpler in hindsight. Now, my hope is for new teachers to learn from my experience so that they can be more prepared than I ever was.

The following list is based on my own experience and by no means a reflection of the experiences of all teachers. I hope that some new teachers, if not all, will find it useful.

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