Knowing
Your Students as People Lisa
Peterson
When I first started teaching, one of my favorite things was sitting
and talking with small groups of students after school. I
was really floundering in the classroom, but focusing on my students
as people helped me remember why I loved kids so much and gave me
the energy to keep trying in the classroom.
However, these after-school chats had another
benefit as well. Because I knew my students better, I began
to connect with them better during lessons. Skeptics may tell
you that your job is to teach content, but knowing your students
as people can help you relate the content to their lives.
For example, because I know my students' favorite T.V. shows, I
can cite them as examples when we study literary genres, or use
them to suggest books the students might like. You can use
your understanding of your students to motivate them, or to help
them deal with personal problems that might be getting in the way
of their schoolwork. In my action research, I made an in-depth
assessment of one student's abilities in language arts and social
studies, but I would have missed important clues if I hadn't gotten
to know that student as a person first. Knowing kids on an
individual level can help you understand their academic issues better.
Some ideas for getting to know your students
as people:
Conversation: This is the
simplest way to get to know your students, and it can be as easy
as making the effort to talk with kids during downtime (such as
homeroom). Some teachers try to eat lunch with a small group
of students once a week, either rotating the whole class through
a schedule or taking the time to focus on particularly needy students.
I find that students as old as eighth grade enjoy helping the teacher
with tasks like putting up bulletin boards, and we can have interesting
conversations while working. I have also had good conversations
with students when providing them with extra academic help.
Journals or letters:
Whether you assign topics or have students choose their own, you
can learn a lot about them from personal journals. Usually,
students don't mind teachers reading their work, but if your kids
do want to keep an entry private, they can fold or staple the page
closed.
If you don't have the time or inclination
to use personal journals, you can try a strategy I used as a social
studies teacher. I began having students write me a personal
letter for homework once a month. I told them that they could
write about anything - it was their chance to communicate with me.
Some kids kept the letters casual - what they did over the weekend,
their favorite T.V. shows, their experiences playing basketball;
other kids used the letters to let me know about serious personal
issues.
Surveys and interest inventories:
These are terrific for finding out information that is easily expressed
in short answer form - favorite musicians, favorite movies, number
of siblings, etc. You can also give kids simple sentence completion
activities to get an idea of their personalities. Here are
a couple of junior high school activities that can be adapted to
any age:
Self- Reflection: Who Am I? [MS
Word File, PDF
File]
Getting to Know You [MS
Word File, PDF
File]
Curriculum projects:
In any curriculum area, you can create projects that help you know
your students better. For example, math teachers can develop
their class surveys into a data analysis project, in which students
develop questions, survey their peers, and then graph and analyze
the information. English teachers can begin the year by having
students write autobiographies or personal memoirs. In social
studies, I had students create timelines of their lives before we
analyzed timelines of ancient civilizations. I also had them
use personal "artifacts" to draw conclusions about their peers before
studying the conclusions archaeologists drew from ancient artifacts.
Whatever you teach, you can usually create a project that will allow
you to get to know your students as you teach required skills.
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