I love my students more
than they will ever know.
“When those paper
stacks get too high, the demands too tedious, the conversations too one-sided,
the love of students gives us the reason. The opportunities we create for them
to learn get reciprocated in the opportunities they create for us to grow.”
This is a quote from a
teacher-written article on a site that I read back on Valentine’s Day. I knew that this was an article that I wanted to share with the class on the
blog.
Love is a simple thing and
yet it can be seen behind many different things we do. I love my students when
I get to the building hours before the first bell rings and leave hours after
the last. I love them when I grade 76 of the same exit tickets each day, but
read each one as a different climb to success or fall towards failure. I love
my students in the difficult conversations that we have and in the time and
emotions that I invest into classroom skirmishes and detention battles. As the quote above states, the learning
opportunities that we create for our students are reciprocated in the opportunities
that our students create for us to grow.
Students and teachers,
we grow and learn together. This is love.
The conversations that
we have around different school structures and systems brings to question are
these different varieties and flavors, from charters and vouchers to community
school models and federal incentive games, all just distractions? At the end of
the day it doesn’t matter what you call the system or the structure of the
school, it only matters whether or not the people in the building truly love
and care about the children that come into the building every day.
The teacher ends the
article by saying that “a real school for children puts forth love in action,
even when the system disallows those emotions.”
Upon deeper reflection,
I have a correction: My students know exactly how much I love them.
I have a new, and
clearer lens for viewing school reform: How does this policy, system, or idea
support love for our students?
So I am left wondering
what is it specifically about our current school system that disallows teachers
acting out of love for our students? What can we do to create schools where it
is easier for teachers, counselors, and administrators to act out of love for
students?
1 comment:
I love my kids and everyone knows it. The affection I have for my students has definitely played into the classroom culture that makes up my room. My students and I have great relationships and this allows a tremendous amount of engagement and learning to occur. However, the level of love that I have in my classroom is not always perceived as a good thing from my administration. I have in some instances heard it referenced as a negative thing. Some administrations do not care to have students know that they are cared for and instead feel the need to teach from intimidation. More often than not I believe students are used to having a negative classroom environment where they are yelled at and often internalize the negativity with which they are taught. This frame of mind does nothing to help students who then never want to come to school and definitely are not interested in learning. I too ask your question “What can we do to create schools where it is easier for teachers, counselors, and administrators to act out of love for students?”
If it were an easier task, if it were something that had a heavier emphasis on it I believe we’d have happier, more engaged students.
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