What I see is the most significant change in my teaching over these two placements is also the most difficult to achieve …positive, caring relationships. I have seen that both at-risk and academically successful students believe it is important for teachers to treat them respectfully and to value them and their efforts, the two groups of students have very different ideas about what makes student-teacher relationships meaningful. Academically successful students value a teacher’s willingness to help them in academic matters. For example, they may not require face-to-face meeting, but they do want personal notes on papers. Yet they want to feel you are available to them. At-risk students encounter more troubles outside of school and are more easily distracted from their schoolwork. As a result, they desire more face-to-face contact with their teachers. These students feel that caring teachers legitimize their personal concerns and also help them refocus energy on such long-term goals as high school graduation.
This is a monumental task when student teaching. As a student teacher you come into their school lives midway only to leave soon. As difficult as the first year is, orienting to a new school, mastering a curriculum, there will be nothing more important than building these caring relationships. I saw this develop in my teaching and have since come to feel that this is crux of what I must do as a teacher. Perhaps this is why taking on this long-term sub work is so difficult. I have been dropped cold and hard into a very difficult situation. I have had a great deal of difficulty writing this critical reflection because at the moment I feel like I don’t remember how to teach.
So, I have taken this moment to clearly define what I believe about student-teacher relationships in hopes that I will realign myself for the sake of my current students.
• Learn as much as possible about students’ personal interests and backgrounds. Try to connect their personal interests with classroom work, where possible. Also, learning
about my students’ backgrounds may help me relate to them more effectively.
• Include journal-writing activities and class discussions, which enable my students to voice and me to address concerns. Give more written, personal feedback.
• Implement social emotional learning opportunities, which improve students’ abilities to understand their own and others’ emotions.
• Be aware of classroom dynamics. Try to diffuse tensions that may exist between students.
• Be patient with those students who are disruptive and disrespectful. Bonding with disruptive students may improve their behavior in the classroom.
• Model appropriate behavior. Students are very sensitive to teacher’s attitudes towards the school and the class in general; therefore, I must be extremely self-reflective, making certain that I am modeling positive behaviors for the class.
•Find some way to have enough control of the room to build these relationships. Find a way to create calm in the room so I can do all these things I know how to do.
•Find a way to give them hope. Their hopelessness is overwhelming. It no longer matters to most of these students if they fail. Somehow I need to build the relationship, then I can build hope, then they can have the opportunity to succeed.