Relationship Building and the Reflective Teacher

After reading Duckworth, Campoy, and Nakkula I found myself thinking back to when I first started teaching which is only eight years ago.  These readings reminded me of the many students I have connected with along the way, many of which still send me emails and come into school to let me know how their lives are going.  Those moments are the ones I cherish because most of the students were difficult to reach.  The students that come to high school feeling discouraged, apathetic, and on the "low level track" usually are the students that have behavior issues and overall like to drive the teachers crazy.  When I first started teaching, they drove me crazy!  But through lots of reading and taking classes, I realized that the problem I was experiencing was mostly mine, not the student's.  I was not connecting with them and eager to learn about their lives.  I needed reminders as to why I went into teaching in the first place.  Somewhere along the line, we lost these kids.  Somewhere they were "told" they were not bright, they could not write, or do math or do science.  They were just pains in the asses.  And every teacher they came in contact with confirmed this self-loathing.  One year I decided to spend the first two weeks of school doing community building and I really tried to break through the barrier of "us" vs "them".  And it worked.  I couldn't believe it, but it worked.

I very much look forward to reading Nakkula from cover to cover.  On page 6, Nakkula writes that "no one is a solo author.  All life stories are multiauthored.  The adolescents with whom we work as educators are cowriting our narratives just as we are cowriting theirs."  What a powerful statement!  This is definitely true for me.  I feel as though I have learned as much from my students as they have learned from me.  Through teaching I have become much less judgmental and much more patient over the years.  I'm actually more judgmental and less patient with the adults!! Ha!!

Nakkula goes on to say that if teachers are not careful, because of the lack of extrinsic reward, they could find themselves burned out as they loose sight of their students as individual people.  It can't all be about the standards, curriculum, etc.  We really need to remember why we went into teaching to begin with.  Connecting with a tough kid and seeing that student light up when I tell him he is a good writer (after being told over and over both verbally and through bad grades that he sucks), one can not put a monetary value on that.  It truly touches the soul and helps me to get up and go to work the next day.  I'm not saying I give kids grades they don't deserve, but I think the community building also builds trust not just with peers but with me as well, which in turn motivates them to succeed.  Many of these kids have been taught not to trust.  Not to trust their parent, teacher, relatives, etc.  They have been let down so many times.

Although I have heard about and read about the zone of proximal development, I am not very good at judging where that is for some of my students.  Also, how do I make sure my students are getting pushed just slightly beyond their limits when my classes have such varied levels?  My sophomore college prep/advanced freshman classes keep me up at night as I try to make sure I am challenging and pushing the freshmen without losing the sophomores.  There are more sophomores than freshmen in each class but that really doesn't matter.  I hope Nakkula talks about that some more within the text.