The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Teachers hear about encouraging students
Teachers can adapt “love languages” of personal relationships to show appreciation for their students and colleagues in schools, said a local leadership consultant.
On Aug. 9, the Lorain County Chamber of Commerce held its annual New Teachers Luncheon at the Spitzer Conference Center of Lorain County Community College.
The program drew about 150 people, including about 70 teachers who will spend their first school year in Lorain County classrooms starting this month.
Teachers can use business management and interpersonal
relationship techniques to enhance the school experiences for themselves, their students and their fellow educators, said keynote speaker Cathie Leimbach, president and senior consultant of Agon Leadership, a talent development company based in Vermilion.
“We will be focusing on actions you can take to help others feel valued and appreciated,” Leimbach said.
That can mean showing appreciation for their students and colleagues, she said.
The information is meant to help teachers inspire others to feel stronger, and therefore, be stronger, Leimbach said.
Helping other people feel valued raises their selfesteem, increases life satisfaction and increases motivation, performance and productivity, she said.
Leimbach cited studies including the book “The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace,” by Gary Chapman and Paul White.
The five “languages” help people feel loved, valued and appreciated, Leimbach said.
They are words of affirmation, acts of service, quality time, receiving gifts and physical touch.
Implementing the languages does not have to be difficult, but anyone using the techniques must remember different people respond to each one in different ways, Leimbach said.
Research has found some trends and tendencies, she said.
Words of affirmation is the most common way to express appreciation; it can be done through speaking, email, texting, in one-onone or group situations, Leimbach said.
People also feel appreciated when others offer to help with acts of service, she said.
Leimbach cautioned the group to consider helping others with something they will appreciate, not something forced.
Quality time can be as simple as turning away from email or a computer screen to answer, when someone has a question.
For most people, receiving gifts is not their first preference for recognition, Leimbach said.
That means a lack of money to buy gifts is no excuse for not showing appreciation, she said.
Giving away relatively inexpensive items also can be an easy way to show consideration for others, Leimbach said.
In personal life, physical touch is the preferred love language for some people.
That seldom is the case in the workplace, Leimbach said.
Even so, she asked the group for suggestions and agreed that handshakes, high fives or fist bumps are safe, helpful ways to show appreciation and have other people reach out as well.
Leimbach suggested the teachers consider lesson plans to integrate the methods of appreciation into their own classrooms.
In the past, students have responded well, with the lessons extending to their families when the children discuss the concepts with their parents, she said.
The group also heard from Laura Koballa Hudak, vice president of finance and administration for the Team Northeast Ohio economic development group.
Team NEO is publishing “Aligning Opportunities,” a report outlining supply and demand among employers, available jobs and workers in the region.
Hudak encouraged the teachers to use the report as a resource in advising students considering career choices.
Chamber President Tony Gallo quoted acclaimed author Toni Morrison, the Lorain native who died Aug. 5.
Apart from being a Nobel Prize-winning author, Morrison spent years as a professor of literature and teacher of writing.
Gallo cited her advice: “I tell my students, ‘When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grabbag candy game.”
“I tell my students, ‘When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grab-bag candy game.”
— Chamber President Tony Gallo, who quoted acclaimed author toni Morrison