Building Relationships with Our Students - Deliberate & Intentional

 

Welcome back to another school year like no other - yes, it will be unique in its challenges and successes.  Each of us has our own individual stories about teaching during the pandemic of 2020/21.  Hold those stories dear to you because they are important and use them to shape your teaching for this school year. 

My hope this year is to share my journey in a post pandemic school year that is shaped by how I taught prior to the pandemic, what I learned during the pandemic, and what I hope to become after the pandemic.  I hope to share how I continue to grow as a teacher in trying to make connections with my students so that they become life long learners.

To start the year off, I encourage you to get to know your students.  Find out their interests, their likes and dislikes, their favorite classes, their favorite artists, what they like to do in their free time, what they do on the weekend and on and on and on.  Getting to know your students will then allow you to tap into these interests and weave them into your subject matter - with the idea of building motivation for your students.

Here are a few ideas I use to try and build a connection with my students in the first week of school:

1.  Prior to the school year, I write each student a postcard.  The hope that I have is that students realize I am thinking about them and that I am excited about the upcoming school year.  I start writing them midsummer because writing 150 postcards takes some time.  The one additional benefit that surprised me was the parents' reactions and how they appreciated the effort to connect with their child prior to school starting.  The postcards are addressed to the parents and students - below is an example from this year.

2.  On the first day of school, I have students do an activity where they write ONE word that describes their hopes, dreams, and goals for the year.  The word should have special meaning to the student so that when you think of this word you can at least make an attempt to live by that word each day.  I give each student a blank sheet of paper where they write the word down and add color/images to the sheet of paper.  The idea for this activity came from "Write on with Miss G" during one of my many Google searches a couple years back.  This year I plan on expanding the activity by taking each student's word and displaying one word each day from each of my classes in the back of the room.  The idea being that for that day this is my 'special' student who has given the class a word to live by in the hopes that each student will feel special on their day that their word is displayed.  See below for ideas:

3.  I also do 'Name Tents with Feedback'.  The idea comes from Ms. VanDerWerf  - check out her blog post.  This does take some time during the first week of school but I have found that the time spent going through each student's response allows me to get to know each student and provide them with a personal statement back.  The purpose of this activity each day is to start the process of building a relationship with each student - a relationship that hopefully will provide the opportunities to build motivation and lifelong learners with each individual student.  I have modified the name tents so that they have these questions:  Click here

As you begin this new school year, I hope that you connect with your students in unique ways so that relationships can be forged that will allow each and every student to achieve more than they ever thought possible.  Building relationships begins the process of creating a safe environment for our students - and after last year, many students are looking for this safe place in their lives.

My upcoming blogs will focus on student motivation, Universal Design for Learning, student feedback and much, much more - I hope that you come back next month to find out what is happening in my classroom.  You can also reach out to me to come and visit my classroom anytime.

Remember, take care of yourself as well during this challenging upcoming year, and most importantly, give yourself grace.

Teaching and still loving it,     

Kevin Stott                              

De Anza Middle School          

8th grade & Integrated Math I