Always say "Happy birthday"

Yesterday I celebrated my birthday.  I am incredibly lucky that this year my birthday fell on one of the first days of summer vacation, so I was able to spend the day relaxing at home with my wife and daughter. Throughout the day, my iPad kept displaying happy birthday messages from my Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram friends.  I got birthday wishes from co-workers, friends and neighbors I see almost every day, and from former colleagues and friends from school I haven't seen in years.  Each of the birthday messages I received had one thing in common:  each one made me feel appreciated.  Every year I am touched that people take the time out of their day to wish me a happy birthday.


While I consider myself to be blessed with an amazing family and many great friends, all of my students aren't that lucky.  I know that throughout my 9 years of teaching I have had students who don't have people to wish them a happy birthday or to make sure they feel loved and cared for.  Like all teachers, I do the best I can to make sure that the first thing students learn when they walk into my classroom is that I care about them, that I care about more than their score on a standardized test or if they turned in last night's homework assignment.  In order to make sure that all of my students know that I care about them as people I make a very conscious effort to do a few things:

        • Find out when each student's birthday is, and tell  every student happy birthday every year.
  • Figure out what type of praise students respond to.  Some kids want to be recognized in front of the class, while others would prefer a note, tweet, or a private chat after class. 
  • Compliment students on new clothes and haircuts. 
  • If a  student looks like they are having a bad day, ask about it - even if they don't want to talk or give the infamous "nothing" response, just asking likely made a difference in the student's day. 
  • If a student doesn't turn in an assignment or has his head down, don't judge the student, talk to him about it.  
  • Ask about events going on in students' lives.  Find out about last weekend's camping trip, soccer tournament, or whatever activities are important to students. 




Please continue the conversation by leaving a comment to share your best practices to make sure your students know that you care.  

Popular posts from this blog

5 Technology Tips for the Not-so-Tech-Savvy Teacher

Image
The popularity of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, coupled with high-tech video games and 21 st century entertainment for our students outside of school is necessitating a change in the way we as educators prepare and present information to our students.  Gone are the days where we can get away with 50 minutes of lecturing.  Our students are watching engaging Youtube videos and reading Facebook statuses to get their information instead of reading magazines and waiting for their favorite shows to come on TV.  Today’s students want their classroom experience to be as engaging as their lives outside of school.  The only problem is that most of us did not grow up in the same technological age as our students.  Integrating technology into your daily plans can be a very daunting task for an educator who is not familiar with Web 2.0 tools.  Here are 5 tips that will help you start using technology in your classes.  1- Get comf...
Read more

Low-tech methods to teach 21st Century Learners

Image
One of my favorite type of activities to do with students in my 9th and 10th grade language arts classes is to incorproate social media into lessons.  I like to have students make Facebook pages for characters in stories, create Twitter feeds for characters and write blog posts that allow them to compare issues in a text with issues that are faced in our society today.  While this all sounds great in practice, I quickly learned that making my dream of seamless socian media integreation  into a reality was a little harder than I thought it would be. To combat the lack of technology and firewall issues that  have stopped me from incorporating Twitter, Facebook and blogging into my classes, I have come up with low-tech paper-and-pencil replacements.  Below are three sample low-tech activities I do with my students in place of their web-based counterparts.  Click on the name of each project to view the handout for each project. R+J 140 http://goo.gl/Q...
Read more

A Metamorphosis of Educational Proportions

Image
Before this school year started, a colleague I respect asked me to attend a training session with him for a new grade book program our district was going to roll out.  Little did I know that my quick response was going to trigger a metamorphosis in me. Before I go any further, let me provide you with a little background:  I have been a professional educator for the last seven years.  For the last six years I have taught freshmen and sophomore language arts.  I have always thought of myself as an educator who was able to get the job done with students, but I was light years behind most of my more experienced colleagues. Fast forward to the grade book training:  After two days of training provided by the school district, we were on our own to answer teacher, student, parent and administration questions about this new program.  While I never considered myself a building leader of any kind, I was quickly thrust into a leadership position in re...
Read more