Thanks Rick for sharing your thoughts to the last post on relationship. I too encourage you to visit Crystal’s post on maybecrystal where she shares similar experiences as the school year starts. The survey that the high school gives each spring is also given at some of our other schools and all of our schools provide students with the opportunity to share their perceptions on similar topics. Is the data from students in our other schools similar to the results of the high school survey? Are many students bored and do they believe that teachers don’t care, or is this simply a high school issue? Are you aware of the data and has your school focused on these same or similar concerns?
If you wanted to see every teacher in our system do one thing to promote relationship in their classroom what would that be? What one thing would students do regularly that would demonstrate to teachers that they cared about the learning? What one thing would students do to demonstrate that they appreciate their teachers? These last questions are related to the commitments that will emerge from the teacher/student conversations that started at the high school on August 28th.
It will be interesting to see if they are able to identify a commitment that every student can commit to and what the commitment(s) will be that the adults determine will influence student perceptions about their school. Behavior will determine the success of this initiative and as we know behavior change is personal and not always easy, especially on a scale this large, about 100 adults and 1600 students. Answers to our Influencer questions will be important as they continue this process.
*Can I do it?
*Is it worth it?
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2 comments:
As I have followed the post from Terry and you, it caused me to reflect upon my own classroom and school in regards to the relationship piece in the elementary classroom. A few years ago, we took on the philosophy at Shadow Lake that they are all “our kids” and in theory this is a great concept but I believe that it takes time and after a few years it is now a part of our daily school culture and professional learning community.
But even with this, when I reviewed our schools climate survey results this year I was taken back by our drop in many categories. The results of the survey made me reflect on things in my classroom, as I feel relationship is a critical piece in 5th grade. So one of the things that I did this year which I have not done in the past, is have classroom helpers for various classroom tasks and jobs. I felt that by doing this it will bring a connection to the classroom through being community contributors and makes them feel a part of our school and classroom depending on the task. Another area that I am working on is looking at finding ways to connect with kids during recess. Elementary recess is the one break we get in our schedule to take care of our own needs but I am looking at creating at least 2-3 times a week some indoor activities to play with kids that are not connecting with kids in class or just want to do something else other then going out to recess. This time will also allow for more one on one opportunities in a small group setting.
Mike the questions you pose in your post are surely thought provoking and ones that will cause me to reflect more on this topic. What would I want my students to share with me that showed they liked school and cared about their community? And how would my students demonstrate that they appreciated me and my school? I am not sure but one thing I know that cannot be beat though is the students that come back and visit as Rick discussed in his post. It is always great to see them when they visit, knowing that they have taken the time to drop in and say hi.
The last thing that I want to say is that relationship/connection with students is one of the single most important things we can do in order to help our students be successful. The unfortunate roadblocks that we face are that we do not have class sizes of 15 which would allow for more one on one time. We also have students that connect in ways that we did not grow up with (social networking, texting, e-mail, etc…) and this makes traditional ways much more challenging. Also the test scores and making sure we get every last bit of knowledge jammed in can get in the way of the time we give to relationships.
Though these roadblocks are here I think this qoute really speaks to the importance of connecting with the kid now. “We worry about what a child will become tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today." ~Stacia Tauscher Thank you Mike for you post, it is a great one for all of us to reflect on.
I finally found time from the busy beginning of the year to reconnect, and I've really have enjoyed the recent posts, as wells as Rick and Scott's comments. As a father of three Tahoma students (and one more next year), I believe the connections with teachers are there in many cases. Maybe we need to do a better job celebrating them, which would in turn reinforce our sense of importance of this value?
We have discussed 'merit pay' quite a bit this summer. I wonder how we could inspire teachers to build the connections with students?
Jonathan
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