I realized something today. I realized something that I kind of knew but kind of forgot. I realized something that every master teacher knows in their heart of hearts. It all starts with relationship. If it doesn’t start there, it just doesn’t start.
My backgrounds is in elementary and junior high schools. I’ve been in the business for 27 years and taught most grades from Kindergarten to grade 9. During that time, I think relationships was my strength, my bread and butter in the teaching world. I made mistakes, several a block likely but, because I had strong ties with my students, they forgave me a lot of slips. Deep down they knew that I cared for their success, I cared for their learning and I cared for them as fellow passengers on this train we call life. Even as I assumed a leadership role, I think the teachers in the schools saw me as caring about their success, at least I hope they felt it.
The last few years though, my role has changed. I am centralized and out of a school and I look at transformative education and moving our district schools to improve practice to ensure greater student success. I look at literacy structures and strategies meant to engage all learners. I look at improving PD quality and how we can best utilize the experts in our buildings to facilitate growth. I look at the movement away from content based learning to a more competency based system for all kids. Somewhere along the lines, the importance of relationship building got a little blurred.
My revelation came from an unexpected place for me though. It didn’t come from my comfort schools where I see the smiling faces of small eager children, it didn’t come from a lecture from my friends still directly supporting kids on the ground level, it didn’t come as a divine dream. It came from visiting one of our district high schools. As I mentioned before, my resume has a void in it called high school and, being keen on understanding how all levels work, I opted to do a half day of observation at the higher grades. It was inspiring! From the moment I entered some of the classes, it was evident that the relationships present in the room were the foundations of the learning. The students felt safe to share their thinking and make mistakes. The teacher in the room cared about them and their learning. The teacher wanted nothing but success for their kids and the kids knew it.
So, not to down play the importance of our shift to a new vision of learning, I think we need to remember that we are human first and as humans, we long for connection to one another. Great teachers know this and always have. Start there and keep it always present and the other shifts that are going on will be much easier.
Thanks High school teachers for the reminder.
Keep on Learning,
Dave
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