Mike Beetham Challenging Topics, Communication with Parents and Guardians, General, Homework, Learning About Your Students

Homework or No Homework?

This is a question that I have asked myself over and over. At different phases of my career I have given myself different answers ranging from they must have homework because that is what good teachers do, to homework is a vehicle that creates problems and turmoil for the families of my students and thus should not be a part of my program.

There is no answer that fits all classrooms or that fits all students. Like every other aspect of my program I have to differentiate according to the needs and circumstances of my students and their families. The following site pinpoints the top 5 reasons for assigning homework and top 5 reasons for not assigning homework ( http://www.teach-nology.com/tutorials/teaching/proandconhomework.html

I am going to share with you an event in my career where assigning homework created a very negative scenario and conflict for a student. This student was a very intelligent, friendly, polite young man who was a pleasure to work with in class. Over the first two months of school he excelled in class but habitually did not complete any home tasks. It got to the point where his lack of responsibility toward homework was seen as a behaviour concern. A few weeks later I became aware that his Mom was in a coma and that his family spent each night by her side in the hospital. My lack of awareness of my student and his home situation created undue and unneeded pressure on him and the family. As a result, homework was not a part of that student’s program.

On the other side of the coin, a student that I am working with this year spends time every night with his Mom reviewing the day’s work along with increased home reading. That has resulted in an accelerated growth in his area of academic deficits. In both cases, my decision to not assign homework to student A, and to assign extra homework to student B was the right thing to do. Homework for the sake of homework is not a productive component to any student’s learning. It must have a specific purpose that is helping meet the targeted academic outcomes of the classroom.

Mike Beetham Before School Starts, Celebrating Success, Classroom Management, Communication with Parents and Guardians, Diverse Learning Needs, General, Inspiring Students, Learning About Your Students

Sunshine Calls

When my students arrive into my alternative behaviour classroom in September, so do their parents and families. The family’s beliefs and attitudes about school have been shaping ever since their child became a part of the formal school system. For the  family of my students, that means that most communication from the school has almost certainly been a negative scenario that had unfolded. So when I complete my first call home in September what do you think the response is from the parent who answers the phone? You are right, “Okay what did my child do now?”

Just as it takes time to build relationships with your students, so does it take time and effort to connect with families. This is especially true for families of students who have struggled in school or have had difficulty adjusting to school and classroom expectations. For me this starts with an onslaught of ‘Sunshine Calls’. A Sunshine Call is a strategy that I use to gain the confidence of my families by showing that I care about their child, I believe in their child and will balance the type of information that comes home and not dwell on the negative (attribute based approach).

The best analogy I can use to explain the benefits of this strategy is to compare it to banking. The more positive deposits that I put into my account (compliments, sunshine calls) the stronger that balance will be. When I do have to make a withdrawal (call home about a negative scenario) my positive balance will hold me over and the relationship will remain stable and the family will be more likely to support me knowing that it must be concerning for Mr. B. to be calling home about it.

What is exciting for me, is when my students start to understand and realize that their best efforts and positive changes will be shared often and ongoing with their family. I start by asking them if they would like me to cimagesall home and tell their parents about some positive scenario that took place that day. They 100% of the time say an astounding yes. As they come to realize this is a regular part of our classroom, they begin to ask me to call their family and let them know about their math work or reading. That is the time that I know why I will always look to see the glass as half full.

Mike Beetham Challenging Topics, Diverse Learning Needs, Learning About Your Students, Mental Health, Wellness

When Your Best Is Not Enough

I work with some very challenging students, who at their core, are really nice people. As I get to know them as people first and learners second, what surfaces quite rapidly is that many of their needs are beyond my skill set. I am not a counsellor. I am not a psychologist. I am not a physician. Yet the needs they bring to my classroom are very diverse and more complex than just literacy and numeracy. I find myself often saying, what can I do to help this child succeed and feel good about themselves. As you know, there is no simple answer to this question.

This year I have been faced with a dilemma that I have never before in my career been in. I do not know what to do for a child in my class. All of my efforts, strategies, consultations and professional readings have left me in the same place I started with this child over 6 months ago. This individual’s lack of progress (and at times regression) have been a huge stressful burden on me as I struggle everyday trying to figure out what to do to help this child stabilize and grow as a student should. My initial reaction was that despite my absolute best effort, I have failed this child.

I have a very good friend and colleague to whom I shared this belief about myself with. He was very quick to point out that I had not failed him. The student’s lack of progress is a result of many needs not being met. He began to query me about my approach with the student. The conversation went something like this:

Do you differentiate the work for this student so that it reflects his current academic level? Yes

Do you provide accommodations in his program that meet his individual’s learning needs? Yes

Do you work hard to make that student feel welcome and cared for each and every day in your classroom? Yes

Do you seek out additional supports within your school and/or board to assist you in creating a program for this student? Yes

Do you communicate your concerns in an ongoing manner to your school support team, principal as well as the student’s family? Yes

Do you smile and tell that student what a nice person they are and thank them for coming in everyday and putting forth their best effort? Yes

At the end of that conversation I came to realize that I had not failed this child. I had to the best of my knowledge and skill set did everything humanly possible to help this individual succeed and that despite my best effort, that progress was not occurring. I had not failed him, because I had not given up on him.

Shawna Rothgeb-Bird Classroom Management, Communication with Parents and Guardians, Learning About Your Students, Start of the year

Advice for Starting Partway Through the Year

This particular post comes to you as I try to wrap my head around going back to work on Monday after fifteen months off. I left mid-October of 2014 after being placed on medical leave for the last few months of my pregnancy, handing off a lovely group of students to a great teacher for the rest of the year. That was difficult, but I knew they were in good hands. This time, I’m taking over a class someone else has been teaching for the first half of the year – something I find much more difficult.

This isn’t the first time I’ve taken over for another teacher. Having done this a few times now at different grade levels, I’ve learned a few things to help make the process a little smoother.

Introduce yourself! This might seem like a no-brainer to some of you out there, but communication with families is really important. No matter what time of year you’re starting, you should either send a letter home or invite families into the school to meet you. I actually like to do both. Your letter doesn’t have to be huge and really shouldn’t be your life story, but a little bit of background is nice to include – where you’re from, how long you’ve been teaching, that sort of thing.

Get to know your students. I start the first day by playing a few get-to-know-you games, then transition into a variety of activities meant to provide insight into where my students are with language. I’m a French Immersion teacher, and at my level I don’t teach math, but if I did I would include some activities to learn their problem solving/reasoning skills in that subject as well.

Find out your students’ goals for learning. This is the perfect time of year to talk about goal setting and have your students do a learning skills self-assessment (in fact, I do that every year already). Goal setting can tell you a lot about a student and where their strengths are. I find students are typically very honest when discussing their learning skills, too. Those two activities can give you a lot of insight into your students’ strengths and areas for improvement.

Don’t try to change the routine all at once. You don’t have to be stuck with the routine the previous teacher put into place before you arrived, but you really shouldn’t overhaul everything at once. Transitioning from one teacher to another is already stressful for students, so try to keep most of the routine familiar to them while you gradually implement your own ideas. It’s hard to rein in your excitement, I know, and sometimes you just have so many ideas you want to try them all right away before you forget them. Resist that urge – you don’t want to overwhelm your students.

Resist gossiping about the previous teacher, either with colleagues or students and their families. I’ve been there, I know all about it: people will try to engage you in discussing the previous teacher’s style, personality, and methods. Just don’t do it. I probably don’t have to tell anyone this.

Don’t take on too much outside the classroom. I love running extracurricular activities, but when I’m starting an assignment partway through the year, I try to limit how much I’m doing other than teaching my class. I need the extra time to plan and, I’ll be honest, unwind. You have lots and lots and lots of years ahead of you to do the drama club or sports team you love doing. Sometimes, it’s incredibly liberating to just have to worry about teaching your class every day.

Remember that students need time to adjust. Don’t take anything they say or do the first few weeks personally – I’ve had students decide on the first day that they hate me, only to have them declare me their favourite teacher by the end of the year. I’ve had students do a complete 180 in behaviour when I started. Students will react differently from one teacher to the next, and they need time to adapt to having a new teacher.

Finally, don’t be discouraged. I find starting partway through the year much harder than starting at the beginning. I feel lost for a few weeks every time, and I think that’s a normal part of the process. Just like at the beginning of the year, it will take time for you to find your footing and get into a groove with your new class. All you can do is show up and do your best every day.

Mike Beetham Before School Starts, Constant Learning, Inspiring Students, Learning About Your Students, Learning in a Real Life Context, Professional Learning and Growth, Student Ownership

Classroom Resolutions

New Year’s Resolutions are a time-tested tradition in which individuals make personal commitments to improve in some aspect of their life. I have used this activity in my classroom for over two decades and find it to be a wonderful, fun tool in helping both myself and my students set goals on how to make the most of their academic year.First and foremost I model this activity for my students by reflecting on my first four months of the school year. I determine what went well and what do I need to do to further enhance the success of my students. I set personal resolutions in the following areas:

  1. Continue – what practices are going very well and should continue in the new year
  2. Improve – what practices have not went as well as expected and what do I need to do to improve that area of my teaching
  3. Experiment – what new area or tool would I like to start to experiment with in my day-to-day practice

This year my resolutions are going to be to continue with the use of technology as an alternative option for demonstrations of learning. I will improve in my area to both understand and apply the concept of sensory accommodations in the room (especially around noise). I will start to experiment with social media and how it can become an option for my classroom pedagogy.

For my students it starts with a discussion around New Year’s Resolutions and how it is a part of their life. Most often they talk about how the adults in their life make resolutions around quitting smoking, losing weight or exercising more. The conversation shifts to what the purpose of a resolution is and why people make them. I pose the following question, ‘Should only adults make New Year’s Resolutions?’. Of course their answer is always no. That leads us to talking about the types of resolutions that children might make. It always generates a very rich discussion about how we are individuals with different strengths, different needs and different lifestyles. That focus in itself is a key vehicle in which our group comes to understand and accept the uniqueness of each other.

The final product that is used by my students is a graphic organizer that will focus on four different areas of their life. The first is personal health. What do they need to do in order to be healthier (exercise more, less screen time, eat healthier)? The second focus is on happiness. What will they do in order to be happier in their life? The third area is academics. What do they need to spend more time on in order to be successful? The final component will be on friendships. How will they be a better friend or seek out more friendships? For the month of January we review these resolutions every Friday. After that we look at them every 2-3 weeks and finally in our year-end celebration we examine how successful we have been in reaching our resolutions. Over time I have had the students put them in a time capsule that is opened up much later in the year as well as having them take it home and share with family or a close friend. Whatever way they are used, it is an enjoyable way to start the new calendar year off.

Mike Beetham Assessment, Before School Starts, Combined Grade Classes, Differentiated Instruction, Diverse Learning Needs, Integration, Learning About Your Students

Tortoise Brained Learning and Students

In my last post I focussed on the philosophical belief that quality vs quantity of professional learning is a more effective way of enhancing pedagogical practice. What does that mean for my classroom instruction? As I grow to understand the presence of different learning styles in my class, the presence of multiple intelligences and the wide variety of learning rates it forces me to re-examine both the long term and short term planning that I set up.

In the earlier part of my career my long-range plans were reflective of an efficient way to ensure that all of the curricula was covered. This I now refer to as curriculum planning and not student centred planning. As my understanding of differentiated learning and assessment grew, so did the need to adjust the way my planning unfolded. What I had experienced was a short-term understanding of content and when that topic was revisited months later there seemed to be a regression in the level of understanding of my students. That forced me to ask myself as to how well they had really learned the content in the first place.

Through years of experimenting with both my long range planning and unit design there arose two aha moments for me. The first was the need to revisit big ideas (overall expectations) through a spiralling curriculum. This means that I would chunk the content into more manageable pieces and revisit the content several times over the course of the year (quality vs quantity).

The second profound understanding was in time management and how do I accomplish the ability to revisit overall expectations with so many demands on the school day. Thus came the desire to increase my skill set in integrating learning across a variety of curricula. The following is a direct reference from the 2006 Ontario Language Curriculum:

In cross-curricular learning, students are provided with opportunities to learn and use related content and/or skills in two or more subjects. For example, teachers can use social studies reading material in their language lessons, and incorporate instruction in how to read non-fiction materials into their social studies lessons. In mathematics, students learn to identify the relevant information in a word problem in order to clarify what is being asked. In science and technology, they build subject-specific vocabulary, interpret diagrams and charts, and read instructions relating to investigations and procedures. All subjects require that students communicate what they have learned, orally and in writing. Their studies in the different subject areas help students develop their language skills, providing them with authentic purposes for reading, writing, listening, speaking, viewing, and representing.

Needless to say, this is a spiralling learning experience for me as I continue to help my students consolidate the learning that they are a part of each and every day.

Photo of Tammy Axt
Tammy Axt Learning About Your Students

A music lesson inspired by the awesome BLUE JAYS!

If you are like me, you have been watching every Blue Jay game with excitement as they get closer and closer to becoming the AL East Champions. I decided instead of fighting the desire to spend every waking minute talking about them, I would incorporate this excitement into my music program for September and early October.

I started off by introducing my favourite player’s names and practiced saying the names to a steady beat. I chose different names according to the curriculum expectations for that grade. For Grade Three and Four classes I chose Tulowitzki, Price, Pillar, Smoak, Revere and Goins. For Grade Five classes I chose Donaldson, Bautisita, Price, Pillar, and Revere. The initial goal was to get the students to feel the rhythm of those names before they had to label them with standard notation.

In groups, students then chose their 4 favourite players from the list and put them into an order. Their first job was to get everyone in their group to say their players in unison to a steady beat. After they completed that task successfully, they took the player’s names and did it with body percussion. They could clap them, stomp them, snap them as long as they made the rhythm of the names to a steady beat. After that, they took their rhythmic composition and chose an instrument to perform their creation.

After the students could say those names comfortably we labelled them together. Tulowitzki represents 4 16th notes which is pronounced tikatika, Donalson represents 2 16th notes connected with an 8th note which is pronounced tikati and Bautista represents 1 8th note connected with 2 16th notes. All two syllable names represents 2 eighth notes which is pronounced titi and all one syllable names represent 1 quarter note which is pronounced ta.

Once we labelled their rhythms, each group made a final composition. They could use the names of the players, body percussion or instruments in any order they wanted. They were encouraged to add different dynamics and to use their different members of the group for solos or duos. Some of my groups added Beat Boxing or awesome stomping to get a good beat going. My instructions were to be as creative as they could be.

We then put all of their presentations together in a rondo form ( A B A C A D A E A F etc.). The A part of the song could be any short chant or baseball song. I took the song Alabama gal and changed the words to “Let’s hit a home run, Let’s hit a home run, Let’s hit a home run, Toronto Blue Jays”. Then I assigned each group a letter such as B, C, D, E etc.

I learned so many things about my students through this fun project. I learned that very few of my students know anything about baseball as they often compared the positions in baseball to the positions to something they were more familiar with, such as cricket. I also learned how passionate they are about sports. I feel like I have tapped into a whole new hook when I feel their energy is lacking later in the school year.

Next Friday, hopefully when the Blue Jays are getting ready to play their second game in the American League Division Series, I will be holding a kick ball tournament during the day at my school. The gym teacher and I decided to celebrate our students’ music by holding an opening ceremony where each class will share their creations followed by the game they have been learning in gym. I am sure we will probably even take some time to sing “Okay, Okay, Blue Jays, Blue Jays, Let’s Play Ball”.blue jays

Shawna Rothgeb-Bird Classroom Management, Differentiated Instruction, Diverse Learning Needs, Learning About Your Students

What Elizabeth Taught Me About Spec Ed

(This is a story about a student I had several years ago. Her name wasn’t actually Elizabeth. Teaching her taught me a lot about Spec Ed – how to tackle problems in steps, how to work with students to find what works for them individually, and above all else, how incredible it feels to know you really helped someone learn how to be successful.)

I heard about Elizabeth before my job even started. She was one of those students. If you haven’t had one yet, you will: the kids whose reputations precede them. The “hard” kids.

Let’s backtrack, shall we?

Fresh out of my teacher education program, I had just accepted a position teaching a full-day kindergarten program at a private child care centre. At that time, the OT lists for my board (OCDSB) weren’t open, so in order to pay the bills and get some money for AQs in the hopes of one day getting into the board, I took this job.

Because this was a child care centre, my class was small: 10 students total, with 2 more transitioning in partway through the year. This was starting to seem like a pretty easy assignment… until we got to Elizabeth.

“Oh, she’s going to give you a run for your money.”

“She’s vicious.”

“Good luck with her, she’s a nasty one.”

Those were all things people actually said to me about this child. A five year old. I have something of a stubborn streak in me, so right then and there I decided I was going to make it my goal to change Elizabeth’s experience at school.

Elizabeth was a bright, articulate girl who loved story time more than anything, needed you to know her opinion on something, and readily shared facts about things like the moon because she was always reading books and learning new things. She loved art, and she really loved success.

In the classroom, however, Elizabeth seemed to act out. It didn’t take long for me to see what other teachers had warned me about: she hit, she threw things, she had a hard time working with her peers, she couldn’t sit through circle without making at least one other student miserable, and she would have meltdowns during seatwork time.

Other teachers had tried positive and negative reinforcement strategies with her, their success limited. Her parents seemed defeated and were obviously reticent to even ask how her day had gone when they picked her up at the end of the day. I couldn’t figure this kid out: she really enjoyed learning, she really enjoyed arriving at school every day, and she loved her peers, so where was her behaviour coming from?

So I asked her. No one had ever asked her why she did these things. After a particularly trying circle time, I took her aside and calmly asked her why she had trouble sitting through circle time without rolling on the floor, taking out books from the shelves, or touching everyone and everything around her.

And at the tender age of five, she said, “Sitting still hurts.” Her tone was serious. She was distressed. “When I sit still for too long it hurts so I move around, but then I hit people and they get mad.”

It was clear that she felt compelled to move, and that asking her to stop moving was having a detrimental effect on her ability to engage with the class. Together, we discussed some strategies to help her through circle time. As a starting point, we tried fidget toys; she was partial to two bits of LEGO which had been put together with a hinge, so she could move the pieces back and forth while she sat and listened. Most of the time, just having that small toy was enough to keep her physical body occupied while she focused mentally on circle time. Some days she needed more than that, and in those times, we had an arrangement where she could get up and walk around the classroom as long as she didn’t play with anything and was still participating.

So that’s what she did. I sat with the rest of the class, going through our daily calendar work, reading stories, singing songs… and she did everything we did, she was just walking around while she did it. When she had something to contribute, she came to the edge of the carpet and raised her hand just like her peers. She waited to be called on. And when she felt she needed to get up and move again, she would show me a peace sign with her hand, I would nod, and off she would go.

These two small strategies completely changed her experience at circle time. After a month of success, we decided together that we would start tackling seat work next. It turned out that seat work was just as simple to “fix”: she just needed breaks where she could get up and move. She would work on her printing/reading for five minutes, go to a centre for a few minutes, come back to her seat work for another five minutes, go back to centres, etc. Some days she was able to get her seat work done all in one shot, other days she needed to break it up repeatedly, but she always finished it. I used a small timer (which I taught her how to operate) so that she could manage this herself.

There were other things I did to help, of course; I tracked her behaviour relentlessly to see what was and wasn’t working, I tried other strategies like an exercise ball to sit on, I worked with her parents to maintain consistent language and discipline between school and home. But the circle time and seat work strategies were really the key.

As Elizabeth’s behaviour in class improved, her relationships with her peers also improved dramatically. Because she wasn’t upsetting them at circle time any more, they were more keen to play with her and call her to join them at centres. Their forgiveness of her past behaviour was total and almost immediate. Even though they had known her for years and had nearly all been hit, pushed, bit, or yelled at by her, they were willing to set that aside and give her another chance.

By our 100th Day Celebration, I wasn’t tracking her behaviour any more because there wasn’t any need. By the end of the school year, all of our strategies were so second nature that I wasn’t even aware of them any more.

I saw her once a few years later when I was working as a daily OT at her elementary school. I said hello, we shared a smile, and off she went with her friends. She seemed to be doing well!

So, what’s the point of all this? I mean, it’s a nice story, sure, and we probably all have a student or ten like this…

1) Identification isn’t everything. Because this was the private system, I didn’t have any specialists to call on and I couldn’t refer her for any assessments to determine whether or not she had an official diagnosis. I could have suggested that her parents get her tested privately, but I was too new to feel that it was my place to make any comments like that. The thing is, even without being “identified” as Spec Ed, I was able to implement several accommodations which ended up helping her immensely. I didn’t need a legal document telling me that she needed to break work into chunks; I just went for it.

Now, as a public school teacher, I do the same thing: from the first day, I put strategies into place based on my students’ needs, even if they don’t have an IEP. If I think it’s going to help, I do it. I still flag students of concern, don’t get me wrong – but I don’t sit around waiting for those flagged students to actually be assessed. There is a LOT you can do while waiting for your concerns to be addressed.

 

2) Class size is important. I was teaching a full day kindergarten class with ten students. I was managing several other challenges in that class, but because I only had ten students, I was able to give each of my students a significant portion of my time and energy. It was easy to track behaviour and implement strategies because I only had ten students. I can’t imagine trying to identify, address, and follow up on students of concern in a full day kindergarten classroom in our public boards because they have two or three times as many students as I had. This is part of why we are fighting for smaller class sizes in Ontario.

 

3) Your students can tell you a lot about their needs. We spend a lot of time drawing on our own past experiences, training, and psychology in order to come up with strategies to help our Spec Ed students, but sometimes we forget that sometimes the best source of inspiration is the student him- or herself. I have made it a point, ever since teaching Elizabeth, to work with all of my students (not just the ones with IEPs) and have them identify their strengths and needs. I make them advocate for themselves: if they need to sit closer to the board, or not near their friends, or have a seat totally away from their peers during lessons, then they tell me that and I make it happen. The results have been astonishing and have dramatically reduced the amount of behavioural problems I deal with on a day to day basis.

 

Make them take ownership of their learning needs. You won’t regret it, I promise. 🙂

Photo of Tammy Axt
Tammy Axt First Week Reflections, General, Learning About Your Students

Getting Started With Music

Hi everyone! My name is Tammy Axt (formerly Tammy Gallant) and I am a music teacher for students in grade 3, 4 and 5 in the Peel District School Board. This is my fifth year as a music teacher and I hope to be able to assist those new to the planning time role in schools across Ontario. My school is a suburban school about 30 minutes outside of Toronto with a very high ELL population. In addition to music, I also have planning time coverage in a contained Autism Spectrum Disorder class.

At the end of June last year, one of my students was very surprised to learn that my family lives in PEI. I realized when she mentioned that fact, that I don’t talk or mention things about myself very often. We are so busy in my music class creating or practicing that I rarely share things that happen in my life. So I decided this year to start off by doing a music activity where both the students and I share a little about ourselves.

To share the things I did during my summer, I created a “Prezi”. Prezi is a great online program for preparing presentations that are a little bit more exciting than PowerPoint. I made slides about learning to ride a motorcycle, getting married and hanging out with my nephews. All the things that I love and that made my summer so great. You can see the Prezi I created at https://prezi.com/rl-hlpfivx5q/my-summer-vacation/. While completing the prezi, I made sure to include things that I did that could have clear and obvious sound effects.

After I presented the Prezi to my students, I gave them an opportunity to talk with an elbow partner about some sound effects that go with some of the activities that I did over the summer. I encouraged the partnerships to make the sound effects with their body or their mouth. I showed the Prezi again and we added all sorts of crazy sound effects to the slides.

After hearing about my summer, the students chose one thing they did over the summer and created a sound effect that went along with their activity. Listening to all of their sharing, it gave me some really great insights into my student’s lives. Some of them come from BIG noisy families, some had great tragedy over the summer and some of them love sports. All of this information will help me in planning our upcoming lessons and helping them all be successful this year!

Tisha Nelson Before School Starts, Building Inclusion, First Week Reflections, General, Learning About Your Students, Start of the year, Student Ownership, Wellness

The First 20 Days of School – Connecting with Students is a Great Place to Start

Teaching is always new! With a new group of students, fresh reflections on practice and the opportunity to start from scratch, as it were, the start of the school year provides teachers and students alike the opportunity to create new beginnings every year. Knowing this, what might some important considerations be to make it a great start? Chapter One of The Heart and Art of Teaching and Learning: Practical Ideas and Resources for Beginning Teachers highlights four important themes for success: connecting with students, passion for teaching, attributes-based approach and importance of school culture. I would like to focus this reflection on the importance of connecting with students within the first 20 days of school as a means to establish an authentic relationship with students that fosters trust and inspires a willingness to take risks within a safe learning environment.

Renowned poet and author Maya Angelou once said, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” This profound sentiment holds true for teachers and their relationship with students in that when students feel respected, safe and cared for, the experience of learning is enriched. The following are five practical ways for teachers to build authentic connections with their students at the start of the school year:

1. Be authentic. When teachers model what it means to be an authentic learner – mistakes and all, students are then encouraged to take risks without fear of reprisal. Let your model of authentic learning influence students to do the same. This form of transparency sets the tone for fostering meaningful connections between teachers and students.

2. Ask students about their needs and listen. Validate student voice by positioning them as the experts on themselves. Invite students to share their learning needs and the things that you could do as their teachers that would support their success and commit to doing them. Conducting multiple intelligence and attitudes and dispositions surveys are great ways to begin the dialogue for students to articulate how you can support their learning and their level of self-efficacy.

3. Explore student interests. As teachers we all need to cover the curriculum but viewing the curriculum as a launching pad as opposed to a landing pad can invite student’s interests to take centre stage in the teaching and learning process. Ask students about their interests and find creative ways to invite further inquiry into them while exploring the curriculum at the same time.

4. Learn the students. In addition to the information that can be found in student records (i.e. OSRs), commit to learning more about your students in meaningful ways. Pronouncing student names correctly is important way to let students know that they are valued. Challenge yourself to learn at least five non-school related facts about each of your students. This can help to build a positive relationship and validate their experiences outside of the domain of the classroom. Finally, being aware of students personalities (i.e. introverts, extroverts, etc.) will inform how to relate to them as well as setting the conditions of the classroom experience.

5. Invite to student voice by fostering a reciprocal relationship with your students. Nurturing a collaborative learning environment for students does not merely mean giving students the opportunity to collaborate with each other, but it also means positioning students as collaborators with you. Partner with your students to design the learning space and learning opportunities. This fosters student ownership in the teaching and learning experience and empowers students to be meaningful contributors to the class. When you invite their voice in classroom decisions, ensure that it is validated by action on your part. Leveraging positional power in the classroom creates space for a more meaningful connection between students and teacher.

As teachers we are in the business of supporting students success. Fostering meaningful connections with students goes along way in promoting both student achievement and well-being. When students know that their teachers authentically care about them, their willingness to learn will support their ability to do well. Starting the school year with students in mind will set you on a solid foundation for building upward. Make it a great start.