“I care about you, you have value, you don’t have to prove it to me, and you have value”. Care is assumed and does’t need to be earned. It allows for struggles and students to mess up and it doesn’t. Invalidate anything.
It really begins with getting to know your students and understanding what they really like and are into. It is easy to care about students who share common likes as you. It is more challenging when you don’t share common “likes”. You need to spend the time and ask questions to these students so you can try to find the connection point an understand more (relationship building). Also need to try to understand the aspects of their lives that might lead to the things you don’t like that they do. If a student isn’t doing what you want, instead of getting mad about it, get curious and try to find out the why behind what they are doing that you don’t like.
As a 6th grade ELA teacher, I had many occasions where students who struggled in my class would look for a way out. Maybe that was putting your head down and trying to sleep, being blatantly, disrespectful, and even attempting to get kicked out of class, or a myriad of other ways to avoid the work that they struggle with. I remember a specific student who simply wouldn't read, but with doodle a lot, and with my background as a reader of comic books, I tried to see if something like that would pique his interest and maybe break the ice. It ended up being a common topic that we both happened to enjoy. I brought in a bunch of my comic books and that became the reading that he would do for the most part. It ended up allowing us to have something to chat about and give me an in into his reading. It didn’t make him love the class too much more beyond the comics but behavior was much better and he was more willing to give me some leeway and engage a bit since he knew I was trying and willing to hear him out and meet him at his starting point.
It really begins with getting to know your students and understanding what they really like and are into. It is easy to care about students who share common likes as you. It is more challenging when you don’t share common “likes”. You need to spend the time and ask questions to these students so you can try to find the connection point an understand more (relationship building). Also need to try to understand the aspects of their lives that might lead to the things you don’t like that they do. If a student isn’t doing what you want, instead of getting mad about it, get curious and try to find out the why behind what they are doing that you don’t like.
As a 6th grade ELA teacher, I had many occasions where students who struggled in my class would look for a way out. Maybe that was putting your head down and trying to sleep, being blatantly, disrespectful, and even attempting to get kicked out of class, or a myriad of other ways to avoid the work that they struggle with. I remember a specific student who simply wouldn't read, but with doodle a lot, and with my background as a reader of comic books, I tried to see if something like that would pique his interest and maybe break the ice. It ended up being a common topic that we both happened to enjoy. I brought in a bunch of my comic books and that became the reading that he would do for the most part. It ended up allowing us to have something to chat about and give me an in into his reading. It didn’t make him love the class too much more beyond the comics but behavior was much better and he was more willing to give me some leeway and engage a bit since he knew I was trying and willing to hear him out and meet him at his starting point.