McAngus - September (Building Positive Relationships)

In my room, I channel Harry Wong (via Capturing Kids' Hearts) by shaking every student's hand at the beginning of every class (yes - even during flu season). I also spend time at the beginning of the year creating a Social Contract that allows the students to "buy in" to how we want to treat each other. Rather than serving as a "gotcha," however, it is a visual reminder of expected behavior. Also, before beginning any lesson, 2 students share "Good Things" on a rotating and voluntary basis. No matter what their experience was like before coming to class, this allows us to get off on the right foot.

What stands out to me most about the importance of student-teacher relationships is that we usually start the year by focusing on them, but we tend to shift priorities as the year gets going. For them to be sustained, we must pause and devote time in class specifically to relationship-building. It's like having a plant that needs to be watered and fertilized regularly to achieve its maximum growth.

From the resources we studied, I plan to do a better job with the following:

• attending outside activities (to do this, I need to communicate with my family well in advance so that we can plan accordingly)
• letting students into my world (to  do this, I plan to re-vamp my family picture wall in my classroom)
• getting parent input (to do this, I plan to solicit parent notes at the beginning of the year)

To go beyond the resources, I plan to communicate with my fellow Firebirds to see what is (or isn't) working in their classroom.