Relationships

Just last week, my mom (who works for a local school district) forwarded me an email she had received at work. It was an email reminding teachers of the importance and the power of building solid relationships with their new students so that the rest of the year could be successful. It mentioned that the administration was supporting the teachers in the elementary building and across the district by allowing them the time to create these at the beginning of the year instead of demanding that the horrible testing and assessment craze start immediately. I am proud to say that this district has tried to decrease the amount of focus on the testing and Common Core material that is rolling in as they still try to focus on the important aspects of learning: relationships between students, teachers, and faculty. I feel that this focus might be what we as future teachers must keep in mind as we begin teaching. We might not be able to avoid testing our students in ways that we don’t believe to be helpful or necessary. However, we can, we must, try to create these imperative connections with our students if we are to give them the kind of education we believe to be needed to best help them grow as individuals. At least at the beginning of this testing fad, it may be up to us as the classroom teacher to keep the attention on the child’s growth and away from the testing as best we can. We have to be consciousness to make the classroom a welcoming and caring environment for the students to learn in, even if we are forced to read scripted lessons. We can infuse the love of learning into the lessons while still preparing them for the mandated tests. If we concentrate on this, I believe that we can minimize the impact of the “banking model” on our students. This article (http://voices.yahoo.com/importance-strong-student-teacher-relationship-7097062.html\) spoke to the importance of creating these relationships, something I think we could all use as a reminder as we sometimes forget that we as the teachers must go the extra mile to make sure that all feel welcome and engaged in our classrooms.