I know that I have many teacher friends who follow both facebook and my blog, so I thought I would share this message that I just sent out to my campus. It was prompted by the tragic killing of one of my students over the weekend.
Building relationships and knowing your students
This weekend had been full of reflection for me as I work though the sadness and frustration of losing one of our 6th grade students. After hearing about the sad news I sent a text message to my mom telling her what happened and sent another text to a teacher asking if she had read the email from Kevin. Within 30 seconds of each other my mom asked me if I knew the student well and the teacher asked me if he had brothers or sisters. It was at the moment that I could hear Kevin’s voice telling us how important it is to build relationships with our students, something that I thought I had done well with until now.
After letting the news process for a bit I went out on the longest mountain bike ride I have ever been on and purposefully lagged behind the group I was with so that I could use my time on the trail to reflect. In my head I went through every class and every student to see if there was something unique that I could identify about each of them. Every class had those two or three students who were quiet, did their work and did everything they were asked to do. Deonte was one of those students. A student that I thought I knew, but apparently not well enough.
And once again I heard that voice telling me how important it was to build relationships with and know my students. Every single student. Not just the ones who are respectful and do their work or get upset because they lost two points on a quiz. We all have those students who make us cringe as they walk towards our room. The ones that we just wish would transfer or get sent to DAEP. When really those are probably the ones we probably should be building the strongest relationships with. Even last week I was guilty of celebrating the fact that a student had just transferred to another school, when in reality that student just needed love from his teachers because he clearly did not get it at home. Even the high school students that caused this tragedy probably just needed love and needed the security that someone cared about them.
So, towards the end of my long trail ride I decided to challenge myself. I know that there are only 40 days of school left. But there is a lot I can learn about my students and a lot of relationships that I can build in those 40 days. I would like to share that challenge with all my West Family. That way if one of our precious babies becomes an angel and someone asks if you knew them well or if they have brothers or sisters you can answer the question. And answer it knowing that you had done all you could do to build a strong student teacher relationship with that student.
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