My Job to be Done

     Thinking back on my education growing up, I have very distinct teachers who impacted me, while others I can hardly remember their name.  What was the difference that make some stand out in my memories more than others?  It was the student-teacher relationship that was created.  Elementary school was filled with teachers who cared about kids and made learning fun, but there was one teacher in particular, to protect her identity I will refer to her as Ms. Pat.  Ms. Pat didn’t just care about her students, Ms. Pat cared about getting to KNOW her students.  What they were all about – their interests, their family-life, their extra-curricular activities.  She would let classmates share jokes and silly stories, write plays that would be performed, and attend sporting events.  Even after I left the school to attend middle school, and eventually high school, Ms. Pat kept in touch and take me and some friends out for lunch during the summer to catch up.  Ms. Pat didn’t just care about the curriculum and state assessments; Ms. Pat cared about humanity and where we’d end up if we didn’t have her love and support.  Throughout middle and high school, I had a few more teachers like Ms. Pat, and what they all share in common is the time they spent focusing on relationship building.

     One of the things I pride myself in doing as an educator is taking time to sit down with my classes, or with individual students, and just listen to them.  My eighth-graders are concerned about fashion trends, music, and personal relationships, but they also struggle to fit in, to know who they can and cannot trust, and other pressures of being a teenager in today’s society.  Middle school students are also very open to sharing what they want in a teacher, in a class.  A teacher who listens to them and genuinely cares about their interests goes a long way in regards to what gets them through the doors.  I’ve had many students share that while ELA was not their favorite subject, I was their favorite teacher because I made learning fun and cared about them personally.

     So what is my job to be done?  What can I do to bring students to school each day?

     I can listen.  I can connect.  I can relate.  According to the article ‘You notice that there is something positive about going to school’: howteachers’ kindness can promote positive teacher-student relationships in uppersecondary school (Krane, Ness, Holter-Sorensen, Karlsson, & Binder, 2017) students want respect and fairness.  My job as their teacher is to continue the personal, casual conversations that allow students to feel respected and treated fairly and continue to keep them excited to come to my class.

     Moving forward with a Blended Learning approach, positive student-teacher relationships will not go away.  Quite the opposite is expected to occur.  With the increased class time due to less lecturing and more discussion or activity-based lessons, students will have more time to interact with each other, and I will have more time to check in with them.  I am able to mentor students through peer collaboration and repeated check-ins; making sure my students have the skills and tools to help them succeed when they move beyond my classroom.  I hope to make blended learning in my class relevant to provide students the opportunity to make connections to the outside world.  By removing the factory-style classroom approach, and instead filling in the time to think critically and communicate, I can only hope that my students will someday see me as their Ms. Pat.

Krane, V., Ness, O., Holter-Sorensen, N., Karlsson, B., & Binder, P. (2017). You notice that there is        something positive about going to school’: How teachers’ kindness can promote positive teacher–      student relationships in upper secondary school. International Journal of Adolescence and                  Youth,22(4), 377-389. Retrieved June 15, 2019, from
    https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02673843.2016.1202843.