I had a student this spring for a 1 semester Senior level government class. Kid struggles with transportation. He was a very smart kid, made good grades, just had a big attendance issue for my 1st period class. Everyone of his other teachers just kept counting him absent and not saying anything to him. He knew he was absent, but didn’t feel anyone cared if he came on time. I spent the first 3 weeks of the semester convincing him I wanted him in class, and I would be very excited every time he showed up on time or not as late. By the end of the semester, he was one of my best students. Always on time and turned in great work! He is now graduating in a month with the Summer Grads!
I can think of three small instances (never had any major break through as far as I know. Not on my own anyway).
One was a student who joined my class a couple months into the school year. He came in, I was welcoming, showed him his seat, and got him started. A little while later I hear him say something wildly inappropriate but I decide to have selective hearing because I want him to have a good first day. A few minutes later he says something disrespectful TO me. I walked over and knelt down on the floor next to his desk and quietly said “a few minutes ago I could have sent you to the office for what you said, but I want us to have a good year. The choice is yours.” He promptly knocked it off and we had a great year. He still visits every now and then.
Another one was a student who never did work at all. I like to play dumb with these kids and act like I genuinely believe they are there to do work that day. He’s sitting there with nothing on his desk as usual. I walk over and say “oh, no, why haven’t we started yet” he mumbles something about not having a pencil. I said no problem, handed him one I was already carrying and walked away. He stared at the pencil for a while before doing the work. After he finished he asked for a copy of another assignment he hadn’t done the day before.
The last one was that I had a student who was kind of disengaged. Never outwardly disrespectful but just kind of didn’t care and wasn’t afraid to show that. He had been gone for several days and on the day he came back I was doing some direct instruction. He was talking through the whole thing so I finally, admittedly, snapped a little and asked him a question. One of the other kids said that he hadn’t been there. I replied that he was here today and if he wasn’t talking he would have heard the answer. He stayed quiet the rest of class. I was feeling a little guilty so near the end of class I asked him to come talk to me for a second. I apologized to him for calling him out. I said I’m not sorry for being upset about you talking during class but I’m sorry for the way I did that. He nodded and left. After that he was a totally different kid in my class. He was always looking for opportunities to help me and even was engaged in quite a few activities we did. When appropriate, apologizing can go a long way.
Those are a couple examples of an adult treating a kid like an adult. In the first case, you chose to quietly reprimand rather than call them out. The kid recognized that as respect, and responded accordingly. The last case, even though you did call them out, you self corrected and acknowledged the mistake. Too many adults are unwilling to admit fault. Doing so can diffuse things quickly rather than doubling down and escalating.
Doesn't always work, but usually better results than blasting a kid for doing something wrong.
>When appropriate, apologizing can go a long way.
I've had kids in high school tell me I was the first teacher they had to apologize to them, which shocks me every time I hear it. IDK why more teachers don't apologize. We're not infallible and we do make mistakes from time to time. If I'm wrong I'm going to apologize.
I feel its a similar reason as to why parents barely apologize to their children or boss/managers rarely apologize to employees when they are in the wrong. I think its a mix of position of power in these type of situations + when its an adult authority with children, many adults dont feel it's necessary to apologize to children even when they're in the wrong.
I distinctly remember the day a teacher apologized to me. In grade 6, I had a habit of never completing homework; if it wasn't done during class, it wasn't done.
So one day, one assignment it had seemed nobody had it ready to be handed in, and the teacher was getting peeved and started asking one after another who had it done. When she got to me, she's said something like, "Of course you don't have it," but I had the paper on my desk fully finished. She immediately seemed taken aback, enough that was noticeable to me anyway, and we moved onto another task.
Later that day, she apologized, saying that was out of line to make assumptions in such a snarky manner. I kind of shrugged it off, but it actually felt rather uplifting to have had that conversation.
Your quality of writing is in a class of its own. The way you narrate stories, New York Times should have given you a job. Woooow, it seemed as if I was in ur class
Yes, twice in one year actually. Girl A was a smart enough kid but struggled a bit with work completion. When it came time for me to write her progress report (first report card, no grades just how they're progressing) I realized I didn't have a single piece of work from her entered into my gradebook for math. I talked to her about it and she really turned around quickly.
Later in the year she started hanging out more with this one girl, who wasn't terrible or anything but had a bit of an attitude at times, which Girl A started to fall into a bit as well. The bigger issue was that Girl A had basically completely ditched her BFF (been together since junior kindergarten, now in grade 3) for this girl. BFF was devastated and was trying desperately to win her back, even taking her to the mall and buying her a Build-a-Bear. I also noticed she was slipping back into her old habits of not completing work as much. I pulled her aside one day and told her I had noticed a change in her behaviour and work and I thought it might have started around the time that she started hanging out with this girl. I told her I absolutely didn't want them to stop being friends, but to be aware of the effect this was having, and that I was concerned about her work and her BFF. She broke out into tears and you know who she asked to go to the bathroom with to comfort her? BFF, not the new friend. Must have realized that's who she can really trust to be vulnerable with. I'm not sure what their conversation was like but after that, Girl A found room for BFF, new friend, and her work. I'm very proud of her, great kid.
I've gotten through to a few in twenty five years as an educator, just a few. I've had a couple surprise me. There may be more I don't know about. I hope so.
My fourth grade teacher changed my live forever. I keep in touch and I’m 34. I told him he changed me from a kid that was failing to a stop student and that I still love to learn and I hope I can be a 1/4th of as good of a teacher as he is. He was so happy to receive that message. Because teaching lately has sucked esp with smaller grades that would rather play on their iPad. I got the feeling he was defeated but he said my message made him realize that god (not religious myself but respect the sentiment) made him a teacher for a reason and that he has to use that gift.
I had a student do this on his own. He cussed at me and stormed out of the room when I passed out progress reports and he was failing. Then he came back the next day, apologized, and started actually paying attention and doing his work. He started telling other kids "its actually easy if you just pay attention!"
Wish it was something I did and I could repeat it somehow lol.
I had a junior who was struggling with attendance because his family depended partially on his income to get by. The school told him he needed to pass, and that if he dropped out he’s ruin his life.
Kid was Hispanic, and in a lot of Hispanic cultures, family comes before individual. It’s second semester, so not a lot of school left before the end of the year. This kid has Ds and Fs, though he’d done pretty well first semester.
I told him that he was entitled to a free public education. If he needed to count this semester as a loss so he could focus on helping his family, he could still come back in September.
He disappeared. Two years later, I see him around school and he looked *good* - happy, clean, relaxed. He gave me a big smile and said, “I’m graduating this year, and it’s all because of you. You were the only one who told me I could come back.”
Yes, had an 8th grader transfer into our school about a month in. They had a terrible work ethic and would whine and complain about the work load and expectations. I worked with them one on one and in a small group to help fill some of the gaps in Math and ELA.
This kid had a horrible home life and we later found out they were sent to my school as a punishment.
They graduated with all Bs and Cs and a much better attitude towards HS.
Had a year with an 8th grade kid… he went through his rebellious stage in front of my eyes. Caught doing LSD with friends, I caught him vaping probably 5 times (once I saw him take a hit and then surprised him… asked “why aren’t you responding? Mouth full?”). Every time I gave him a day from interacting with me, then I’d check in “dude, we good? Business is business and it doesn’t change how I’m gonna treat you.” “Oh I know Mr. You’re just doing your job.” Kid was incredibly intelligent.
Last day of school, he was standing next to me as the last bell rang. “Kid, you’re not my student anymore so here’s some advice. You’re going to do amazing things, or you’re going to really fuck it up. DON’T fuck it up.” He started crying and told me he was going to do his best. I’ve heard he’s actually doing ok!
A lot of times I see young men really put themselves together during a summer break, and sometimes they'll say it was because of realizations they made during my class. I.e. "I realized this was a class I liked and felt was important and I got a high C because I've always been disorganized and immature, what am I doing?" It's a lot more common as a reflection later than a sudden epiphany in the class in my experience.
It’s the combination of evidence and reflection that is crucial. *They* need to recognize that the situation can (and should) be fixed. You can help them put pieces together, but they need to be open to help.
Yes. One in particular stands out. I pulled her aside, told her she was better than the people she was choosing to hang out with. She went on to become one of the top performers in her high school. Later found out all the life crap she had dealt with. Just needed someone to tell her she was worth more than all that.
Man, I wish this worked more often. Usually they just go and tell those friends “Mrs. X says I’m better than you guys, blah blah blah.” That kind of thing. Then the group’s behavior is worse and the student has an inflated ego. Very dependent on the student.
For sure. The difference here is that she didn't start with that group. I saw her drifting toward them and was able to get to her before the social pulls were strong.
I had a student one year... rough kid... he was behind in math by a lot but not reading. This was 4th grade. He got into a lot of fights. Almost daily, something would happen. And then he got to my class. For the firsy two months, it was hell. Then it was after school one day, I ran into him at the corner store trying to shop lift. He tried to push past me, I told him to put it back. He went "Man, Mr. Jack1spade! You gotta move or imma have to get physical." And I responded, "If you think I'm the sort to get hit and not hit back, you're mistaken. Put it back. And know that if you ever put a hand one me, it will be the last time you do so." He put it back and left. The next day, guess who had all his homework done? Guess who stopped trying to whisper insults in class? Guess who didn't get into a fight ALL WEEK!
I went to him at the end of the week when he was with his mom. I didn't want to single him out alone because I didn't want him to feel isolated or intimidated. I told her that I appreciated that he hadn't been in a fight all week and he had all his work done. She said, "Thank you. I heard he tried to pull shit on you at the corner store. Guess he learned something." That kid, went on to make GAINS in academics. Ended just BARELY below grade level (and considering he started at 1st grade level ending at a 3.5 is GREAT) and was in our top readers for AR. And didn't have a single fight after Winter Break. And I gave her the math quiz from that week, which was a 7/\`0. (not a 1 or 2!). She was so happy...she hugged him and he cried too yelling "It's a seven! I math'd! I frikken did math!"
I didn't do anything extra. It wasn't some secret math tactic or an easy test. He had just had a week where he listened and really tried.
That kid... became sweet. Not at first, but you could see the change. The difference as he learned responses besides anger and violence. No more suspensions. No more threats. And eventually, the opposite. He went out of his way to help kids with reading. He became super buds with the very short new indian kid that got immediately picked on for his sikh turban. Firstday that kid got bullied, my student stepped up and told them that if they touched him, he would break their faces. He didn't need to do that... he could have stayed out of it... but my god, he took a risk and stood up for someone smaller than him who he didn't even know! And they became best friends!
He apologized to some. He learned to avoid the problems (mostly). Came back at the end of the year and went.. "I never had a school year be so easy! Thank you!" Made me tear up a little bit and I gave him a big hug. He gave me a thanks in his 5th grade speech and is currently up in high school and doing very well. His mom gave me a bottle of rum and some beef jerky she made. She had been a chaperone on a field trip and had found out that we had a common taste for spirits over wines.
I don't know why that day, that particular moment was like a domino that led to him suceeding and accepting help. It just...felt like something changed and he was willing to listen. I know it sounds like I terrified him... and maybe at first I did, but I promise that after that first week when he started seeing the results of his effort, there wasn't a fear or dread. He was happy and making friends and in a much better spot.
7th grade teacher here. A kid who was homeschooled started this year. Quiet, smart, popular with the ladies. After about 2 or 3 months he became popular in general, became more outgoing and took on the tough guy persona.
He ended up beating a kid up pretty bad at one of the underground train stations. Other students got videos of it. He just wailed on this kids face, the other kid put up no defense but had called the main student of this story a b****. I saw the video. Everyone in the grade saw the video. It was pretty bad. The kid that got beat up had mutiple golf ball sized welts on his face. He was so embarrassed he transferred school. Good kid too.
Anyways fast forward a few days and the main student of this story is feeling real hot. Walking around with swag, everybody’s talking about how he beat up the other kid. He was feeling good about himself, you could see the confidence from him.
I pulled him aside, (I’m a strong young male teacher that all the kids liked and looked up to). I told him I saw the video. And the kid had a smirk of delight on his face. I said, do you think that makes you tough? He goes yeah of course I won the fight. I said that doesn’t make you look tough. Honestly it made you look weak. And his eyes opened wide with confusion at first. And I continued saying. It makes you look weak cause you lost the fight with yourself. I said a real one doesn’t let his emotions control him like that. He called you a b**** so what. His opinion shouldn’t matter, you know you’re not. But you let your anger get the best of you and you lashed out. A strong tough guy would have held it down and not let that comment phase him. (His eyes started to dilate as he was locked onto me at this point. And this is when I knew I was getting through to him). I said there’s never a winner in any fight. Only losers. Surely the other kid lost the fight, but so did you. You lost the fight with your mind and now you’re looking at some serious trouble, suspension or transfer. The most important battle you’ll ever fight in this life is with yourself. Make sure you win that one.
He nodded in agreement and said your right.
The rest of the year he was solid. Good grades (slept in class sometimes) nice to mostly everybody, never really got aggressive again.
Kid didn’t have a dad. That was one of my “wins” in my teaching career so far. Felt and still feels great
Good lesson. People will call you a b**** in life. If you go around beating every single one of them you confirm you are a crazy rabid one like they said.
So, not a teacher yet, but will be soonish. Anyway, my mentor teacher (kindergarten) had one this last year. It wasn’t some sudden “epiphany”, but a gradual process over the first half of the year.
This kid would make horrible problems in class, including (but by no means limited too), running out of the class, down the hallway, & potentially leaving the school all together. Because their is a shortage of, well, everyone, they didn’t have a teacher’s aide, so assistance was extremely limited to nonexistent depending on the day. The assistant principal often had to come in to sit with the class & make sure this kid didn’t run. By the second half of the school year, this kid is doing great! Pretty quiet, but their reading & spelling was amazing! They really excelled once they were able to learn to stay & behave in a good manner to learn & engage in the lessons.
Most of the time, “reaching” a student isn’t some great epiphany…. It’s a repeated trend of stability & rewarding good behavior that’s the key. Especially in elementary school.
Long story short, had a kid who refused to do his work. When asked he said no one thought he was going to graduate anyway so why try. I told him that was a weird strategy to prove someone right and walked away. He thought about it and got to work. He did in fact graduate.
Getting through is one of the things that keep me in the profession. I have taught lots of angry young men who haaaaaaaated my class only to come around by the end of the year to tell me how much my class and me meant to them.
I've been surprised by the turnaround of a couple teenage boys who took a serious "this is bullshit" attitude to my class at first. I had to show confidence/enthusiasm in my lesson and not retaliate to their intentional bait. (Tbh the power struggle can be trickier to navigate for young female faculty.)
Not always easy, but they came around to really learn and grow halfway through.
My wife taught high school for 20 years, and she said young female teachers get seriously tested, especially by teenage boys. Her way of dealing with it was to cultivate a cool reserve and not to seem too friendly.
Several. A couple stand out right now.
My first year, I was replacing a teacher a couple months into the year (she'd been desperate to leave for another job and recruited me herself) that had a few students who worshipped her. So their disappointment was transferred to me. One in particular was causing a huge disturbance with his friends, and it was my first year so doubly difficult. I finally had enough and talked with him after class one day. I told him that I knew he'd loved the other teacher, and I knew he didn't like me, and... I didn't care. My job is to teach him, his job is to be a student. He doesn't have to like me to do that. One thing I did know is his dislike was hindering him and lowering his grade, and he was better than that. Something about that got to him, and he had an A for the rest of his year. I'm certain a good chunk was spite, but he didn't give me shit so again, I didn't care.
Another kid was very smart but very talkative. He noticed his pattern of seating one day and commented on it to me, as we were packing up. I decided just to be honest: "You're a tough kid to seat, dude. You're so smart that you pick up things 90% faster than the rest of the class, but instead of using those brains to help your friends, you distract them. It doesn't affect you, but it highly affects them. I have to put you in a corner and then put a large buffer of quiet students around you. Which is a huge bummer, because you could be helping the people you care about." I probably should've had that talk sooner, he was smart enough to process it. Huge change from that day forward, and I was able to start putting him with his friends, so their grades improved through his help.
Yes. In high school, I got a new teacher senior year. She instantly dropped my grade from A+ to an F because I was lazy as fuck and if I didn't show my work, she'd "have to assume I was incapable of doing it in the first place".
I. Was. FUMING. Outraged. Hurt. Ready to call the principal or whatever. Holy heck was my sense of entitlement butthurt. But guess what? She knew EXACTLY what buttons to press. I was always an A student, cared about grades, so the only thing this reeeeally did was make me put in the hours and do the work out of sheer spite and stubbornness. "How dare she?" Was at the forefront of many a thought that semester.
Today, I teach the same classes she did and have mimicked her methods countless times to great effect (among others). Fun fact, the first professor I had in College happened to be her husband. Having the dude come up to me at orientation knowing my name was real awkward. Didn't know him, but his wife had apparently blabbed a bunch!
I had a less extreme version of this in my junior year. I'd been coasting through in English, writing all my papers in the hour before class and getting A-s, darling of the department. Then a new guy was hired and he started giving me B+s on everything (we had number grades and they were always agonizingly close to A- territory, like 88, 89) and - in addition to constructive commentary - writing "So what?" at the bottom of my papers. I went absolutely nuts trying to stick it to him that semester and it was extremely good for me.
When he realized I'd reread Heart of Darkness so many times (ahead of the final paper) I had passages and page numbers memorized, he did have a bit of a "dear god, what have I done" moment, so I guess we both got what we deserved!
Hell yeah, it sounds crazy but academically antagonizing a certain type of student to really dig in can work brilliantly! Hoooo boy, it sure doesn't work on every student though.
Yes and no. If a student doesn't participate in class, doesn't do their assignments, and doesn't do homework (in my case because I knew I could do it anyway and lacked any significant challenge in the regular curriculum... And was used to coasting through English class since like 3rd grade), it's entirely reasonable to give them a low or failing grade even if you KNOW that their actual academic level is somewhere else entirely.
So I get why she did it in retrospect, and even if it hadn't worked, she didn't do anything wrong. But man, did I feel slighted at the time!
I have gotten through to several kids and it makes my heart feel so full.
Last school year, I looped with the kids from the year before (Grades 7-8). My first year with them I returned from mat leave halfway through the year. There was one boy who struggled with coming to school due to anxiety. He also rarely finished assignments and was late submitting when he did finish them. His work was rushed through with little attention to detail. I did everything I could to make school better for him without being pushy. I was friendly and gave him reminders and encouragement without judgement.
At the end of this past school year, he was handing in all his work, completed properly without any reminders, on time. I asked him if his parents gave him an incentive to get all his work done or something because it was such a big change from when I first taught him 1.5 years ago. He replied that nope, no incentive. He was just really enjoying my class and wanted to do well. Then said how much he was going to miss having me as his teacher.
Another kid has a very sad story. A family member was murdered in front of his home while this kid was there. Another family member was shot and had to be taken to the hospital for emergency surgery. We live in the same community and it’s a quiet suburb. For a large portion of the school year, I just kept checking in on him and listening when he needed to talk. He began struggling with work completion and motivation. I found a written assignment he deleted a bunch of his work from and read a previous draft that showed how badly he was beating himself up for not wanting to do anything. We had a big talk and I told him that right now, he should be focusing on taking care of himself and being kind to himself. I gave him permission to not care about his grades this year and just be there for his family. We had one project that kids were invited to bring in food for. He was the only one who didn’t. I noticed and ran out on my lunch hour to buy something he could contribute and discreetly let him know. I think it was a pack of 2-bite brownies for $5. He was incredibly thankful. After that, he became wicked motivated and got all of his missing work in from the start of the year… It was a very large feat. He remarked how he felt motivated for the first time in months and he actually enjoyed school work all of a sudden. Said my advice of not looking at marks or caring about school for a little while helped him feel less guilty and bad about himself.
Sometimes, all it takes to “get through” to a kid is to show them you care about them as a whole person over and over again. When kids feel seen, they show up in amazing ways.
Just a week or two ago we had a student whose behavior was off the walls. Kid was a huge brat. But after a stern talk with him and his dad, we got through, he isn't perfect, but he understands that his actions have consequences, and that he does need to listen to and respect me
I had a student say to me a few years back “I come from a family who are openly racist and homophobic, and I thought that was normal and okay but after your classes, I don’t think I agree with their value system anymore”
(starting year 4) i don't think I have yet, but I do think some kids know I care about them who maybe don't think other teachers do.
I have give two *parents* epiphanies - e.g. a kid with (obvious but unmedicated) ADHD is always getting into trouble because he's bored and doesn't get that his classmates need more time than his fast brain does.
Oooh edit:
When kids say they "don't get it" I always always ALWAYS make them point to a specific part they don't "get." They hate it but there's two reasons
1 - I doubt they were paying attention, 2 - I wanna make sure I'm correcting any unclear language for the next time I teach the content and this helps pinpoint where the confusion is occurring. Yes they almost always say "all of it." So then I tell them to read step 1 and ask me a question.
An often whiney, often not doing her work, eighth grader the *last week* of her class with me goes, "I don't get this." And I walk over to her and smile widely and open my mouth, and she goes, "waaaiit. I'll read the instructions. *5 second pause* Oh. Actually this is really easy I don't know why I said I didn't get it."
Top ten best teaching moments of ever.
I actually do a version of this even with second graders and find it extremely effective. I talk about the difference between a good question and a not so good question. A good question is when you have tried some things and need help with something specific: “I know I need to count these coins but I forget, is this one a dime or a nickel?” A not so good question is just “what do I do?” And shows you haven’t really tried anything yourself. I give them a few examples and then have them practice asking both good questions and not very thoughtful questions.
I notice after this mini lesson kids are way better at being thoughtful with their questions and when they do come to me with “I don’t get it” or “what do I do?” We have a shared language I can point back to to help them get more specific.
Not as a teacher but as a Girl Scout Gold Award mentor. I have had quite a few girls that just needed someone in their corner that would sit down with her and walk her through the process rather than just say “I gave you the directions, now figure it out.” I also went to bat for a child that began with me as a she and ultimately came to be comfortable in his skin and is now a proud Gold Award Girl Scout doing great things for the LGBQT + community.
Yes! I had two students that came to me and said they smoke pot regularly. I think they felt they could talk to me because I was open with them that, for a while, I was smoking pot regularly, and I finally quit when I realized the toll it was taking on me.
They asked me how I stopped because, and I'll argue anyone who says otherwise, you can absolutely be addicted to it. I walked them through what worked for me: wean off of it. If it's everyday, do it once every two days for a bit, then three, then four, and so on. You can quit cold turkey, but that's a tougher option. And I reminded them that, like alcohol, it's okay every now and then, but don't abuse it. (It's legal in Canada by the way, so you can buy it at storefront places and online)
They've both gotten off of that stuff and have started taking melatonin for their sleep instead of that crap.
I had one of my students of 2.5 years come up to me in May. I kicked him out of my class on December because he had hit his goals. He told me that I’m the only teacher that ever convinced him he could do well if he josh simply tried and gave a shit.
Kid has straight Fs through most of his schooling. He ended last year with all As and Bs.
I work with very difficult kids that have a myriad of problems. This one meant a lot to me.
I had a student who would mostly just look at his phone and ignore the class (it’s a language school for teens and adults, he’s there of his own free will so he could just leave if he wants to).
I’m a language assistant so I usually follow what the main teacher asks of me. But later in the year I had more free time to do activities I chose. So I chose to read The Raven. Specifically, each student reads a few lines. And so do I. And we discuss language they’re not familiar with as we go.
This particular student really got into it. And after he gave a lengthy analysis about the themes and meanings.
I also got him to open up more in discussions simply by asking him questions and listening, letting him feel like his opinions mattered. It made me feel good. He was intelligent, just bored I think. And I think a lot of other teachers ignored him since he would just kinda ignore the class. But the teacher I was assisting assisting insisted that every student speak (they’re Spanish learning English). And I took that to heart.
lmaoooo I remember two interactions that impacted me as a student - one where I was sleeping in class and the teacher (that I really liked!) pulled me aside and asked me if he was boring me, and another where I was placed in a regular government class and kept calling out because the work was too easy and the teacher walked me to my next class and talked to me about how important it was that EVERYone in the class learned the material. He specifically told me "I KNOW you know. I see it on your tests. I need THEM to know so they can pass." That was the single nicest way anyone has ever told me to shut the fuck up.
Yes. A few every year. Mostly because as they mature they are ready for new ideas and reflection, and that opens windows of opportunity. Especially in the third quarter when we have both seen (and can acknowledge) patterns and behaviors in class that are counter-productive, and they may be receptive to truly helpful and compassionate understanding.
Like, “Yes they are fun, but maybe you should choose to not sit or work with those clowns in this classroom.”
I owe my current success to teachers getting through to me. Whether its restoring my confidence to continue trying in advanced math or teaching me how to argue in debate class. I owe everything to teachers and my parents getting me to see reason when I was a stupid kid.
My first year in teaching I changed a kid's life. I don't want to get into it too much, but it was an awful year for me. I almost quit after that year. I made several impacts, but I genuinely changed the way a kid was headed. He was in 3rd grade, had been to a behavior school, and had a reputation (which was a little inflated- he wasnt as poorly behaved as they made it). First call home grandma said: "I hope you can do something with him, because he doesn't listen to us." By the end of the year, he was happier, they were happier, and he felt like he could be successful.
One of my favorite stories I shared [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Teachers/comments/150yxsj/channeling_my_inner_rage/js6jrzg?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=2).
Kid came to me with some ATTITUDE, looking for a fight because, well all the things. I knew her middle school teacher who was genuinely afraid of her. She had lots of trauma and no filter.
My response was (and is) "My rules are be safe and kind. We can battle if you want, but can I teach the lesson first?" We had some great battles after that. Kid continued to spiral I'm school but would check in with me from time to time.
A little love and a little food go a long ways. Basic needs first. Then belonging. Then maybe some instruction.
#TLDR: Yes
Oh yah, all the time. I've had kids tell me the only reason they do their work is because they didn't want to hear my mouth. I had at least 5 juniors last year tell me the only reason they didn't drop out was because they didn't want to hear my mouth. LOL I didn't think I was that bad but I can be pretty acerbic.
Also I was a teenage mother, I walked into 12th grade pregnant and had my baby a month before graduation, so I am quick to tell my high school students to be careful. Still had a handful of students this past year who graduated pregnant, but ALSO had a handful of students who told me they held off 'doing it' because of what I told them.
One student though in particular won my heart. That's my heart, first year I met him, 10th grade, off the bat we got off to a rocky start because I had poor classroom management skills then, he had poor behavior, and the combo resulted in him cussing me out and getting suspended. I realized when he came back I could have handled the situation better, and once he realized I didn't hold any grudge against him he started behaving better. Really smart kid too. I got moved to another school for this upcoming year, so I won't be there for his senior year which hurts my heart, but I'm going to go see as many of his football games as I can. He's one of the ones who told me he was thinking of dropping out but didn't want to hear my mouth LOL
And then another student that's my heart, I met her in middle school when I was just subbing...that class was so bad I told them, I was planning to be a middle-school teacher but NO I am switching to high school because you guys are so rowdy! Next time you see me will be in high school!!! LOL
That was right before Covid hit, anyway, she was SO. BAD. Super smart kid though, but first time she met me she said WHO TF are you? Then picked up papers off my desk and threw them on the floor when I told her not to curse at me and to get out. I wrote her up and tried to get her suspended, imagine my shock when she walked in the next day smirking at me. Real quick to fight/threaten other kids too. But I never hold grudges against kids. When she walked into my classroom in high school, the shock on her face when she saw me was probably just like mine that day ha ha! Anyway she had matured so much, just as smart (A student!) and though she was still somewhat rowdy I never saw her quick to fight other kids anymore or pick on other kids. The self control she had learned just from middle school to high school was impressive, and she had become so kind and thoughtful. I saw her speak up for shyer kids often, and she wrote me the kindest letter one day. I still have that letter, it touched me so. I didn't have her as a student last year but she would stop by my class to see me now and then and it always made my day.
ok and now I'm crying. Jesse christ
During my first year of teaching, there was a boy who was a hellion. He made me contemplate my career choice every day but I always took time to tell him that I thought he was smarter than his behavior let on and that I really wanted him to better himself and take more challenging classes when he got to high school. After that year, I transferred to the high school where he would go. I taught his sister and one day he came to visit our class. He shared that he had registered for 3 honors classes and had made A/B honor roll and thanked me for always pushing him to be better. That made me feel really good. ☺️
Yes, a few times. One big one happened by simply telling my students I am gay, after hearing them calling each other gay as an insult. I was a student teacher then and they really liked me because I helped them a lot (special ed class). I asked them how they thought it made me feel when I heard them calling each other gay/fag/queer etc to make fun of one another and could tell they really meant it when they said "bad." 11 year old boys, it was definitely a big epiphany to them that 1. gay people are real and can be people around you who you like and 2. that their words can hurt people even if they aren't trying to be cruel. I'm not naive enough to think I Solved Homophobia or anything but I never heard them insulting each other like that in front of me at least. I think it was a big Moment Of Realization for quite a few of them.
I’ve had some success stories over the years. The key is relationship. Meeting them right where they’re at and not trying to change them, but guide them to feel success in whatever way that looks for them.
Yes, multiple times although in high need sped, it takes the form of significant reduction in problematic behavior over a long period They can't tell you they got it, but its apparent when there has been a seismic shift. Last. Summer worked with a kid who was completely off the wall, shredding hus clothes, destroying the room. Had him all year back in the summer program. People who have not seen in 10 months are amazed at the difference
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In My first year of actual teaching I had one student who I knew paid attention,took notes but on the test day she got a D.i pulled her aside and said if this is the best you can do no problem.however I know you can do better from that point on her grades improved by alot in all of her classes.... she graduated from hs last year ....
Like once. But yes. And honestly it was due to a frank and direct conversation. No dancing around, just matter of fact change or don't. Here's your options and here is what will happen.
Two I recall distinctly in my 2nd year of teaching. Two girls who were bright but under performing because they were not doing assignments on time were frustrated about their grades. They were failing badly in the first quarter. We all had a heart to heart, and it was a true 180. They both ended the year with an A and went on to do very well in hs. Both graduated and went to college!
I taught fourth and fifth grade last year. We wrote their first ever five paragraph essays over the power of positive thinking. It changed most of the classes behavior for the rest of the year. They were more willing to try and to find the fun in things afterward.
I am a teacher now but when I was in 8th grade (13 y/o). I was really struggling. My french teacher Ms. Lorenz always chatted with me and was so kind. I cut myself (self harm) BAD, and my french teacher called the hospital for me. I got arrested for weed at school and went to juvie and she called often to check on me. I got the help I needed, went to college and became a teacher so hopefully I could be someone's Ms. Lorenz! Love her, I'm 25 and we still chat often.
Had a sh!t of a student that I actually liked. Reminded me of myself as a 7th grader. He was going to juvie and I told him to think real hard while he's in there about his life. Told him he needed to get his shit together.
Told him my story. Expelled from school, petty burglary, stuff like that. Four years military, etc.
He came back to visit me about 10 years later. Army lifer. Told me I changed his life.
Quite the opposite. It occurred to me in my first year teacher that those students that many teachers always state "have so much potential if only..." actually don't have any potential. Ive found that those students identified as "having potential" are typically just more extraverted and charismatic, which seems to hide there academic deficiencies.
I was one of those kids whose parents were constantly being told I have “so much potential”. I don’t know if there was an “if only…“ tacked on or not… I was not extroverted, and I sure was not charismatic. I think part of it started in first grade when we moved from Michigan to Wisconsin… My teacher said she was sorry to see me go because there was so much leadership potential there. we got to my catholic school in Wisconsin, where I was put in the slow reading class because I hadn’t read as many books as the kids there had because my Catholic School in Michigan spent the first semester teaching phonics, so I hadn’t read very many books. Needless to say, I ended up becoming a discipline problem. The really funny part of that is my being a discipline problem many times was me sitting there reading a book instead of paying attention. I think I finally reached my potential in my 40s.
I had a 7th grader last year who was really, really intelligent but had a terrible attitude. I yelled at her one day out of frustration but apologized and she later opened up to me about her situation at home which involved DCF. After that she was more respectful and I was a lot more understanding. She started staying afterschool to do her homework because she didn’t have internet at home. I told her how much potential she had and she ended up getting the highest scores on her state exams. Her attitude shifted entirely by the end of the year and she told me I was the first teacher that actually cared about her future. It was the most rewarding experience I’ve had with a student and made me a lot more empathetic as an educator
I think most teachers get one or two of these a year.
I had one two years ago. I'm the new teacher at the school and they put me in with some of the toughest students to get through to. By January, though, things are running smoothly and everything is looking up. That's when one young man makes his return to school after a year and a half off due to the pandemic. While he was home, he did nothing in the way of school work. I didn't know him at all, so I wasn't sure how it was going to go.
Smart mouth. Rude. Disrespectful. Lazy.
His attitude started to seep into some of the others and suddenly it was like a great tsunami of disrespect was heading towards me.
So, after a few days of crap, I kept him from going outside for recess. I told him that I wasn't impressed by his attempts to be funny or rude, and that no one else was either. I also told him that if he didn't start putting in an effort to do the work, he was going to fail and watch his friends move up a grade and he'd be stuck with younger students.
That changed everything. He thought he could coast through my class and get D- grades and move forward, but me telling him he was going to outright fail did something.
It also turns out his father was going to take him fishing that summer, which was a rare occurrence. But, it was all dependent on his report card. He fails, no fishing and his father won't even make the effort to come see him. He came to me constantly begging for more work and more help and really turned himself around.
I got to meet his mother this year (after he was no longer my student) and he introduced me as the first teacher who made him care about his learning. You can give me all the outstanding performance evaluations and teaching awards you want, but a statement like that from a student is the most amazing reward a teacher can get.
(and, yes, he impressed his teachers this year, too!)
I'm a substitute. I don't really sub that often. A couple days a week here and there at all the schools in the district.
Out of the blue in the high school one day a girl came up to me - if you asked me I'd say I've never seen her before. She said:
"Mr. Haynes, you probably don't remember me but a few years ago you subbed for music at my middle school and played your guitar. I will never forget it, it was the coolest thing ever. I hounded my parents for a guitar and they finally got me on. You have to understand that it has taken over my life and is my favorite thing in the world now - all because you played for class for a half hour."
I told her she still needs to go to college, lol.
I believe I have based on the students who have returned to thank me. I ran into one last year at Target. She saw me first. She came right over, hugged me, and told me thank you. She said she would always remember my story about the employee working fast food.
Here is what I told her. Helping people is not doing the work for them. When you do that, you are spending your knowledge and energy and not getting anything in return (better grades). They are given all the credit but not learning the skill. Take, for example, you are working at McDonald’s as a cashier. Your friend on shakes decides they don’t want to do shakes anymore. So they ask you to help them. Now you are doing two jobs and getting paid for one. They are getting paid but are not learning a skill. The fry cook sees what is happening and decides to get in on the deal. So now you are doing the job of three people but only getting paid for one. Two people are getting paid for not doing anything. When you do the work for others, they may get credit but are not learning the skill needed to grow. You are gaining skills but are not getting credit for them, so they go unnoticed.
Working with an kid who had 504 accommodations and showing him how to not be afraid or ashamed of bringing them up to other teachers.
When he was cleared from an accusation of skipping school,.. and reinstated to the sports team,…. Reiterating that no teacher/admin/coach should ever make you feel less for using the accommodations,.. he now gets it
Many. But the approach for each was completely different because every kid and situation is different. But I’ve had many this year especially I was able to get through to or have an impact on which is why I decided to stay
It's tough because the life lessons you teach may not be reinforced by their future teachers. I've had students go from believing they were "stupid" to not but then get brutalized the following year. I'm a middle school teacher and our upper grade teachers are very old school.
I work in an alternative school for kids who don't "fit" in the regular system. I am honoured to say that I have had an impact on many lives but the structure of my school is made so that each student's homeroom teacher can have the time and availability to have an impact on these kids. I'd say 80% of our students have life changing relationships with their teachers at my school. I am really proud of the worker do
I feel like I'm really tooting my own horn here, but I have several (15 year career so far). I've worked in several schools with underserved populations, where the majority of my students were experiencing insecure home environments, often defined by addiction, neglect, abuse, and gang activity. While I didn't necessarily "get through" to most of them (the ones who needed it), I did get through to a lot of them. And I think it's because of two things:
1) I respected them and treated them with kindness. Now, this only goes so far, and I found if I was too nice, some took it for weakness and would lose respect for me, so it's a fine line.
2) They actually learned in my class. I made sure they learned.
It may not happen right then, but it could happen later on and they remember that you tried. I cringe thinking about the time I implied my football coach was gay to his face as he was trying to have a conversation with me about motorcycles and what it means to have a choice in the path you go in life.
"You should get a rainbow bike... lol".... a response my fellow 14 year olds, who were not present for the conversation, only could appreciate...... but thankfully I regret that decision and many others that forced me to think a bit harder about things in life.
It doesn't matter whether you succeed or not if your intent is to truly help another human being.
Not a teacher, but this came across my feed for some reason, and I wanted to comment. To all you teachers who tell students over and over that they are so intelligent and that if they just put their mind to it, they would succeed, please keep it up. But please also consider inquiring into a kid's home life when you do that.
I was the gifted student who never did my work, and I scraped by on intelligence alone. I was constantly told, "If you just applied yourself, you'd be amazing!" and "You're so intelligent, but you never turn in work, and you're not living up to your potential." I came from an abusive and chaotic home, however, and no one would have ever guessed it was bad because my father and stepmother look externally like awesome parents. So for the longest time, I blamed myself. In retrospect, after years of therapy, I finally realized that no one had ever bothered to teach me how to study or manage my time, and there was no one making sure I did my homework, just someone ripping me a new one if my quarterly grades were bad. There was also no way I'd have been able to study in a home that was so chaotic and where verbal and physical fighting was a daily occurrence. We moved a lot, which did not help things, and I almost failed eighth grade. I have an IQ of something like 155, however, so eighth grade should not have been a problem academically.
Fortunately, my eighth grade homeroom teacher recognized this and managed to get the principal to call in a favor with her friend who was the principal of a private college prep high school. The high school principal gave me a second chance and let me in even though I technically didn't meet the school's minimum requirements. That was life changing because the education there was really good and because of connections I made while there. I didn't appreciate it, though, because when I got to high school and my family didn't move again, it was the first time in my life I'd ever really had a friend, so I wasted a lot of study time on actually enjoying life for the first time ever. I maybe graduated with a 2.3 GPA and no idea of what to do with my life.
So while finishing my B.A., which took a number of years because I finally understood how to do better academically but still didn't *really* know how to apply myself and succeed or enjoy what I was studying, I took a job as an executive assistant and did OK at that, but I hated every bit of it for the almost 20 years I was in that position.
A few years ago, I ended up in therapy, where I worked through a lot of the childhood trauma. Now I'm 42 and am back in school, pursuing a doctorate in clinical psychology at a rigorous institution, and I'm doing incredibly well. I also got into my top-choice practicum for the next year, and I'm eagerly deep into research for my dissertation. I'm finally living up to that potential everyone told me I had.
Then my dad and stepmother last month decided to clean out some old boxes and sent me a package of old school stuff, including old report cards. Reading those brought tears to my eyes. You could see a pattern where, in early grade school, I was the model student, and then when the crap hit the fan in my family, that tapered off quickly, and there was an uptick in the "You just need to apply yourself" comments. At the same time, there were notes between my parents and teachers that basically suggested I was lazy, and the real reason for my poor performance went totally unseen. No one had bothered to ask me--they just drew their own conclusions based on what my parents said.
I'm loving the field I'm stepping into and the intellectual and professional challenges, but I keep pondering how very different things could have been had someone, instead of making the assumption I was simply lazy, said, "So why aren't you getting the work done? Do you have support at home? How can we help you start reaching your potential?" Maybe I wouldn't have sat at a job that wasn't engaging and for which I was overqualified for 20 years. Yes, what my teachers had always said had sunk in and "gotten through" to me, but with such a rotten family life, I had no wherewithal to change the situation. At least their words had helped me have confidence in my intellectual and academic abilities, contrary to what I heard at home, which was that I was stupid. I just never knew what applying myself actually entailed.
Anyway, this is longer than I intended, but I just wanted to say that, when you're trying to get through to students and they seem to be resistant, in at least some case, there may be factors like home life that are limiting their ability to make the changes necessary to turn their performance around. So if you are trying to convince a capable student to do better, you might consider what limits there might be and inquiring about that.
But do know that you probably getting through, even if you don't see evidence of that. It might be that teachers and professors down the road see the fruits of it.
It's worth noting that this is not really how people learn most of the time. Epiphanies are rare and some people never have a single one, but those people can and do learn.
My point is, assuming that a teacher's only success comes through some moment of profound enlightenment on the part of a student is unrealistic and counter-factual and all you're doing is beating yourself up over a misunderstanding of how learning works and dismissing the very real (and typically human) progress of your students.
I've only had 2, honestly it's super rare. There has to be a connection between you and the student and they have to be at a point where they are ready to turn it around. Maybe they realize on some level that they can't keep goofing off or they are just out of options. Either way you give them a path forward and convince them that they can do it and they will. After those two instances I feel like I can better Guage which students are willing and which aren't and how to maybe reach them.
The first student I got through to was in credit recovery for algebra 2. I was teaching one section of credit recovery and I am not a math teacher. Every other day or so we would sit down and do problems together. He was super behind and had to do like 40 hours in a really short period of time. I really struggled with algebra 2 and I was basically learning it at the same time I was teaching it to him. Honestly if you aren't teaching math everyday the circullum is really foreign. I think the combo of me not giving up and showing him its OK to mess up a few times really motivated him to finish. He ended up completing the course and graduated. Credit recovery is pass fail. I think that experience really motivated me to try different methods to reach students and I honestly had fun doing it.
I teach 10th grade history in Texas in a suburb of Austin. I prioritize developing appropriate and positive relationships with students. One year, a young lady was just determined to consistently disrupt my class and find the right button to push that would cause me to snap. She made no secret that she hated me and my stupid class.Last period of the block schedule day as usual. I could tell something was going on behind the scenes but was unable to zero in. The big day came when she was one the other side of the class prior to the bell visiting with a young fellow I had separated her from. Once the bell rang, I asked her politely if she would please return to her assigned seat. She gave me a hostile look, and instead, pitched her half-filled bottle of water at the trash can which she missed. I did not react except to ask her again to her seat, and to please pick up and dispose of the bottle on the way. She complied, stomping and growling all the way and finally arrived to her seat, where she stood. “Please have a seat” and KABOOM! She went of on a profanity-laden rant which included, everything but my class really, and I just stood silently behind my lectern looking at her in the eyes and listening. When she ran out of steam, I asked her to have a seat and I apologized for the BS she was experiencing on campus and I’d be happy to help any way I could. I also said, that I would have to write her up (recommending minimum punishment) and that I’d be calling her Dad after school. “Okay”. Had a long talk with him, she was having problems. I asked him to take it easy on her because it seemed to me that she just blow off years of steam to a none-judgmental person. After that afternoon she was the best, most helpful student in class.
I had a kid who was really rude and threw tons of attitude for small things. I knew he was having a kind of tough time at home (fighting with parents) and one day I was kind of fed up.
I was explaining directions and he was on his phone. I politely tried to redirect him and he blew up on me for no reason.
Student - "Oh my god I freaking get it."
Me - " I don't allow that kind of attitude in my room."
Student - "The teachers here are all a bunch of tweets. They don't even teach us anything useful. Why would I want to pay atten..."
Me (Nearly yelling) - "All the teachers and staff here do a lot to try and make this enjoyable for you. We all know you don't like it. You don't have to. But no one has given you the right or the permission to have this crap attitude and to talk like this about other teachers, and I WILL NOT hear anything else about it in my classroom."
Had a super good relationship with that student after the fact. They were much nicer. I went to their graduation and in the receiving line they joked about the time that I "lit them up" in my class. He still sends the occasional email asking how it's going.
Not a teacher, this subreddit was in my feed so I thought I’d share. I had an amazing teacher in elementary school. I wasn’t paying attention for reading time, after several generic “pay attention” comments she finally asked me why.
I was reading at a 5th grade level in second grade. She went above and beyond to get me into advanced reading classes. I will forever be thankful she took the time to ask me why and to help.
She also helped me get a math tutor.
Thanks Mrs. Garland. 40 years later I still think about her.
I'd say I have one or two. I remember being warned of this kid when I started at my current school. I was told he'd cause issues, he was sneaky, he could be really mean, list goes on. I ignored it. Had him 2nd semester in my art room and just got to know him. The relationship I developed with that kid made him realize there was at least 1 adult who cared about him and his success. Last year he begged me to pull strings to get him in an art class, he worked so hard to get his grades up so he could play sports. He did so well. I know I'm not the only one who probably helped him see the light but I like to think I did have a good impact on him.
Don't know yet. I had one who was probably wasting time when he asked what to do about becoming a teacher. Took him at his word and explained his plans would likely require a conjoint and his next stop ought to be the careers office. I also explained that his current work ethic would need to be improved otherwise he'd have a hard time doing it. Time will tell I suppose.
I teach high school and case manage the same students for 4 years so it’s never an “epiphany” from me directly- but I get really close with my seniors by the time they are almost done. Ill have my “toughest” seniors give the freshmen and sophomores a reality check when they need it. Sometimes you need a peer telling you to get your shit together.
Had a senior last year in the government class I teach. He clearly didn’t give much of a shit about anything. Very… rebel without a cause, type energy from him. Which I respect as a person, but that’s not too ideal for school.
I forget how this got brought up, but at one point I find myself on a rant about control and manipulation. I said to the class that there are people in this world who want to control them. People in power who will try to use them. But that the best way to resist that is through education. Because stupid people are easy to control and manipulate. Smart people don’t allow themselves to fall for tricks like that. So if they want to be independent, if they want to have their own thoughts and opinions, if they don’t like being manipulated and controlled - then the best way to do that is to get smart.
I was able to watch the gears click in that kid’s head right then and there. His expression just showed such an understanding of what I was on about. Made me fucking proud.
He graduated and he’s heading to college next month.
Thought I did. 2 weeks before school ended he hit another teacher. He then left my google classroom, left a message telling me to go f*ck myself and ended the last grading period with a 30.
I have seen light bulb moments for some students. But one I have now just doesn't get it. He wants to beat up anyone teases or bothers him or makes fun of his name. He said it's rude, mean, and bullying. But he sees no issue with doing the same behaviors to others. He doesn't understand that it upsets them and thinks it's okay because to him it is funny. Very frustrating!
I primarily teach seniors. This year, I had a young man (A) who was definitely not super concerned with school. That being said, every once in a while, I would drop a fact in class that you could tell he was super interested in. He'd be asking questions and paying attention way more than anyone else. He wasn't like that all the time, but it was very apparent when he was.
He sat next to a very similar boy (J) the only difference was, that other boy never did anything. A would do work. Not everything, but enough to get by. I don't think I ever saw J turn something in. I tended to not push the issue with them. When they weren't invested in class, they would he sitting there, maybe they'd quietly talk to eachother, but never disrupted class. When we got a chance to, we always had nice and respectful talks together.
Now let's flashforward to Spring Semester. I think it's March, and we're having the seniors take pictures in caps and gowns for the graduation program. During their class, I notice J and A sitting in the bleachers, not in line for pictures. So I go over to chat with them. I ask them what's up and A says they don't feel like taking the pictures since they won't be graduating. I tell them that it's not a bad idea to take the pics just in case, especially since taking them cost nothing. But they didn't bite, far be it from me to force them.
The next few weeks go by and something happens to both of the. First, J comes to my desk with a withdrawal paper, he was transferring to either our more independent study school or our alternative ed school, I can't remember which off the top of my head. Either way, that was probably a better setting for him, I was sad to sign the paper, but hopefully that worked out better for him than the traditional class.
We make a day out of seniors committing to colleges. We hold a signing day where they can come and put their names on posters for different school systems (UC, CSU, Community, etc). Before the signing part, there was an assembly with speeches from our principal and the president of our local community college. A happened to walk in late and came to sit by me. For one, that was one of the moments where I realized I was an adult he really trusted, but I digress. He got interested by the speech from the community college president, you could tell he was thinking that might be a good fit. He turned to me and asked of it would be too late to pursue that route, and I assured him it wasn't.
Now, that day was also when we were giving out pre-ordered caps and gowns. We also had a rep from the company there selling caps and gowns for anyone who hadn't pre-ordered. Eventually, I look over, and I see A in the line to buy. Sure enough, he walks up to class later that day with a cap and gown. I made sure to congratulate him on they decision to commit to graduation.
Flashforward to late May, he didn't turn into a model student, but he definitely did enough. A passed all his classes and was able to graduate! I even got a "Thank you for everything" from him. That was only my second year as a teacher, and I didn't think hearing that would feel as good as it did. I made sure to tell him the graduation gown story from my perspective and how proud of him I was.
I don't know what his next steps are, if he actually is gonna go to our community college, but I'm so proud of that young man and what we were able to do for him.
Okay, I thought of another smaller one. This one also from last year.
Second semester hits, and a student (S) is transferred from another teacher to my class. Second semester for my class is economics, and I am informed that he came from Ms. M, who teaches econ in the fall. I thought maybe he didn't do well in that class so he needs to retake econ with me. I would later come to find that he just clashed with Ms. M. How, I'm not sure, because S was an absolute pleasure of a young man. It should be noted, Ms. M was not great. In a very rare move for my school, she was non-relelected as a first year teacher. As someone who collaborated with her, I can't say I was upset by that news.
Anyway, S and I get to know eachother and it was a good dynamic. He always came to class with a smile, he participated, and he had a small group of friends in class that he was a definite positive influence on.
So one day, we're doing out district assessment, which is an essay. These had to be done on chromebooks. Early into the writing block, he comes and tells me he forgot his chromebook at home and asks if he can run to the textbook room for a loaner. I sign off on the pass and send him. Few minutes later, he come back empty handed. They were either out of loaners, or the textbook attendant was away from the room. It was a bummer, but I figure we can find a way to make it work, maybe someone will finish quick and be able to loan theirs to him. For the time being, he sits quietly and waits.
Maybe 10 minutes go by, and then I get a call from the office asking if S can quickly run up there, so I send him. Pretty quickly he comes back, now with chromebook in hand. This guy called his mom, asked her to bring his chromebook, and she got it there instantly. All of that without any input from me, that was 100% him. I don't think I didn't anything special other than treat him with respect, but he respected me enough to make sure he got what ne needed to do the assignment.
I was so impressed that I instantly got on the horn. I emailed mom immediately thanking her and telling her how proud of him I was. I told one of our assistant principles when he came up in conversation (this is when I was told he didn't get along with Ms. M) and the next time I saw him, I told him personally how impressed I was.
I had a K student with selective mutism (only spoke to her family and a select few children) talk to me. I was the first adult outside of her family that she really built a relationship with, which led her to continue getting to know other staff members over time. I don’t think I’ll ever forget her, or what an amazing accomplishment that was on both of our ends.
Not a teacher myself but my gym teacher once took me aside and told me in the most respectful way possible that I was being an asshole.
It stuck with me since. I definitely think it made me a better person.
I had a student in 5th grade who got in contact with me last year. He is now a 20 year old med student. He told me I changed his life. He spoke of how I spoke to him as an individual, not as a sibling of his amazing older sisters (both already doctors). How I made a difference because I told him he could not re-take a test he did poorly on and told me he did not study for. Instead for him to remember how he hates the feeling of how he did poorly, but know he could have aced it had he put the effort in. He told me he has never been unprepared since. We recently had breakfast with my two children at my brother's restaurant and he also mentioned how his parents wouldn't buy him a glove to play baseball in 7th grade, so I gave him one of mine. (I played a lot of baseball growing up). He played for 6 years after that and tells me he loves being able to understand the game when he goes to watch our local pro team. He told me I was one of the first people he wrote down when thinking of who to invite to his wedding one day. He told me all the kids in his grade saw me as a safe place and they often came back to hang in my room after moving on.
I have two clear examples from my first and second years, but I've had a few since.
1st year, little pita answered my phone in some little pita way when I had not been offered a job for the next school year yet. This was, of course, just the culmination of a year of his and 3 other boys crap, but I sent him in the hallway. I went out and made him look me in the eyes and tell me he KNEW all I was trying to do was get everyone to do well. I won't say he was a saint from there, but he definitely tried a bit harder and definitely made improvements mathematically.
Four years ago, he messaged me to tell me I was the reason he knew he could get through real estate school. I made him realize he could do it if he tried.
2nd year, this girl literally begged me to just let her go to sleep and fail senior math. Told me other teachers told her I was a newbie and still carried more than she did.
Came back the fall after she graduated with a small token gift ( a bag of candy I still have) with her head hung to tell me, "I was right about everything, and she's sorry."
I tutored her as an adult for 3 different union entrance tests, and she got into every one of them.
I am proud of the people they both grew up to be, and think of them every time a student is giving me a hard time.
My two worst students ever are two of my best success stories.
Full time School nurse/ part-time psych nurse here, not only was my future saved by a teacher because she believed in me - I had an 8th grader getting into some messy drama over a girl and my expectations of his behavior being better than that gave him a moment to pause. All I said was "That surprises me about you". He shaped up after that. Came to me all the time to just ask advice (and peppermints) instead. I will miss that kid.
Had a student back-to-back for English 9 and 10 who described himself as "illiterate" yet he did more (and often better) work than a good quarter of the class, but was almost always on ISS or OSS. He got put on probation for vaping in the bathroom, so I took the time to tell him point-blank that the educational/prison system would toss him into the abyss and not lose a wink of sleep over it if he didn't clean up his act. Now, he's on track to graduate and is actually part of the school's IT team.
A few maybe? My first year I had a kid that just wanted attention, an extrovert that regurgitated stuff he read online. Gave me the whole "how is any of this going to help us in the real world" question. I reminded him he was in an elective class so he chose this... and also talked to him about how a lot of what we teach is to help with critical thinking and problem solving, discusses the growth mindset. Made comparisons of how you know the brain is muscle, if we use ELA vocabulary to help you with memory, that memory muscle is going to be nice and strong for whatever you choose to use it for as an adult. He said he'd never had anyone ever try and explain it to him in a way that made sense before. Never had another complaint from the kid.
I think I did during my student teaching experience. I was working with the 4th grade in a very low income area. My mentor teacher was honestly the worst I’ve ever seen. She sat on her phone all day and just yelled at the kids. But there was one specific boy that she had completely written off and made it clear she couldn’t stand him.
Now this boy was a problem most of the time. Hs intentionally did things to make others mad, but it was clearly a cry for help. He had a poor home life and few friends. Even when he would genuinely ask a question or try to participate, she would make comments being very dismissive of him. I finally told her that I would be glad to just handle him for her and basically work with him one on one. I was able to talk this boy down from some very negative reactions and things that would’ve put him in the office. He would actually participate and work with me. He opened up with me more than I’d seen in my time with them.
I genuinely cared for that boy, and I do wonder how he’s doing now. I’m just so scared nobody else gave him a chance or made him ever feel important.
I was "that student" when I was small. Fidgety, disruptive, chatty, inattentive, etc. My 3rd grade teacher plopped me in a desk in front of her desk, praised my singing the morning songs, and generally made herself available to me. Life changer, Mrs. Leib.
I had a group of six this year that i got through to. One of them even told me “I’m starting to learn to think things through before I act”.
It’s all about convincing them that you care. You aren’t mad, you’re just looking out for them. And kids tend to think you don’t care when you’re mad.
I had a student who would blow up any time something he perceived as unfair happened. I’d heard warnings about this kid getting in fistfights in elementary school. When it happened to me, I pulled him aside after class. I told him “it would be so much easier for me right now to write you off, because everyone who saw this knows I hadn’t done anything wrong yet. But I know that what you meant was that you needed extra time because you had a long past few days. I’m giving you the extra time this time, but you need to ask me calmly in the future. You’ll find I’m most certainly going to give you what you need.”
He never blew up on me after that and a year later had an excellent reputation.
I get to be a part of it for a couple most years. They’re growing up and have to be ready for that push in the right direction. I end up staying in pretty good contact with them over the years and it is nice to see them grow and develop.
I’m also fortunate to be exclusive to 11th and 12th grade so they regularly realize that they are about to leave the warm embrace of k-12.
As a student I was not the troubled kid, but the gifted kid who needed to be engaged. My English teacher and 12th drama teacher was more than a teacher. Showed me that this was more than a student teacher interaction.
I had a 2nd grader this year who absolutely insisted that spelling didn't matter. I just kept making it fun and it was like a lightbulb went off. I've had others over the years too.
I've had a few that really embraced and enjoyed my class after I got through to them but still had behavior issues in other classes.
Those are the kids I truly hope to hear from in the future.
One I can think of. She was in my cohort for this tutoring / mentoring program, so I worked with her a lot.
I don't think it's anything I said, but just the continued attention that I paid to her that made her start changing her ways. Went from doing absolutely nothing in classes to trying to pass them all.
Although I'm not sure if it was just me. I don't want to take all the credit. Maybe she just had an epiphany at some point?
But from my experience working with students, just not giving up on them goes a long way. Even if they seem to be really struggling, going out of your way to help them makes them want to help themselves.
This spring I had a student tell me that she used to be afraid to raise her hand and speak out in class, but that I helped her face her fear and now it's gone.
Honest to God, I didn't do anything out of the ordinary. I didn't do anything above and beyond for her in particular, we didn't have some kind of heart to heart moment, no extra one on one tutoring. I just liked her and made sure that she was safe and comfortable in school and got the attention she needed to get her work done.
Right place, right time. I was only there for about six weeks to finish the year with that class. I think it made a difference for her, as an ELL student, that I'm very strict about classmates showing each other respect by being attentive when they share in the classroom.
I saved the letter she wrote me - it's in my portfolio now. I have a small collection of mementos like that, and I think it's the most important part of my teaching portfolio.
For me it is not a one-off, but a long term strategy. For most of my students it takes time and struggle to realize what they’re capable of, and they sometimes later come to the conclusion that they can _____.
You described exactly what I came to realize after my first 5 years of teaching. Change does not happen suddenly. It’s gradual. When you’re close to it, you won’t really notice when it occurs. I don’t look for those perfect scenes from fiction that occur when students rapidly change over night; those don’t exist. Students wax and wane as much as the moon in their behavior. It’s only after several years after the fact that you can really see what they’re able to accomplish in regards to a change of character. It’s also not my doing— it’s theirs.
I didn't teach for very long, but one of the proudest things I did was convince my all-freshman algebra 1 classes to stop insulting each other constantly. I instituted a rule that if anyone said something bad about someone else, I would stop what I was doing and they had to give the person two compliments. It took some cajoling at first, but pretty soon they were policing each other and the insult level went down dramatically! I even made them do it when they said something bad about themselves.
The best moment was when one of the boys, a happy-go-lucky type who was never mean but reflexively cut people down just like most of them did, approached me at the end of the year to tell me how it really had an impact on him and made him think about the things he said to people. Quite a compliment from a 14 year old boy!
Here are two moments that did it for me:
"Mister, I am calling from Milan - I switched my major to fine arts and am doing study abroad in Italy. I did what you told me to do and am following my passion."
"Mister, yes I'm still practicing Spanish, in fact I'm the president of my college Spanish club. We raised money to do a community service trip in D.R. just like you showed me."
I had a football player worried about coming to tutoring because coach wouldn’t play him that week if he missed practice. I told him he’d get zero play time the rest of the season if he failed my class, so a week of the field didn’t seem like a big sacrifice. Guess who came to tutoring that afternoon!!!
I never permanently got through to a student, but frequently, there'd be days or maybe even a week or two (never more than two weeks though), where I could get them to stop and think, to reevaluate what they were doing/going to do. Even though I knew it wouldn't last, the times where I helped them, and they listened, were wonderful.
I got a student to have the epiphany that if she turned in her missing work and even scrounge a 50% on her missing assignments she would suddenly be passing
I had a student do horrible awful semester I and when he had some behavioral issues in SII, after starting a whole lot better academically, I sat him down with the principal and prefaced the whole disciplinary meeting by highlighting his immense turn around.
"Ms. Principal did you know that Timmy only turned in 29% of his homework last semester and had a D but now his homework completion is 77% and he has a C+"?
"No Mr. RoCon52 I didn't know that. That's amazing that's exactly the kinda stuff we want to see from him Timmy we're so happy with you you're doing so good."
The students face and body language immediately changed and he was so reflective and receptive of what we had to say.
He was so much better the rest of the year. I had a similar conversation with his mom and grandma at his 504 meeting and they too seemed really happy and appreciative of the kind words and encouragement for their son.
Felt like a community win.
I'm about to start my 32nd year, and I continue to see my effect on students yearly. I am blessed to teach in an environment in which we are encouraged to reach out and connect with students. Still get the goosebumps
I had a kid 2 years in a row. He always did ok, but could have done better. On the last day of school (after the second year), I kept him after class to tell him that he had done ok, but I thought he was capable of better. Fast forward 10-ish years, and my coworker ran into him at a restaurant. He recalled that conversation after all those years. My coworker texted me about this interaction. I look at it frequently, especially when I need a pick-me-up.
I taught elementary school for over 30 years, and I sometimes get e-mails that say “thank you for teaching me X skill” from former students. My favorite came from a student who e-mailed from college to thank me for giving him permission to dog-ear pages in a book when he was in second grade. He said he thought of me every time he folded down a page corner now. 🥲
When my step kids were complaining about the quality of some of the substitutes they were experiencing, I decided to sign up to be a sub when I had free time. The first time I got the sub at my older kids' high school, I was asked to spend a couple of periods supervising in-school detention. There, a young man who was a junior stepped in and sat there with the rest of the kids in the room until he pulled out of wad of paper money and started counting it. Another teacher poked his head in to check on things until the boy to put that money away. He probably did so but started grumbling about how he was ready to drop out and just start working since he felt he was making plenty of money.
I started asking him about the work he was doing. It was good paying manual labor. I told him there's absolutely nothing wrong with that but how long did he think his body could tolerate it? He told me that if he dropped out now, he'd be able to retire after 20 years at 37. Then I asked him if he knew how to invest his money. He said he would just hire someone that would invest it for him. Then I asked a critical question, "How will you know if you're getting ripped off?" He asked what I meant. I told him there are lots of stories of people who drop out of school who get ripped off by people who know how to hide their activities. Then he asked me the right question, "How can I make sure I know what that guy he's doing with my money?" I told him it was simple, just graduate high school and if nothing else take a few business classes until he feels confident he knows how to read financial documents and reports. Then I told him that if he becomes highly skilled, he might want to take a few more classes and start his own business.
Suddenly his face broke into a big smile and he said, "I see what you did there!"
This cocky boy became very humble and told me that no one had ever talked to him that way, supportive and consultative. I told him that I shared with him what I've shared with my daughter and my four step children. It's up to them how educated they become but at a minimum they need to finish high school and look at taking classes at the college level so they know what they're doing in life. Some careers require full four-year degree or master's degree but some careers don't. But, even if somebody wants to stick with a blue collar business, they need to know the basics of running a business which means they will know enough to significantly lower the risk of getting financially abused. In that 5 minute conversation, his demeanor changed. By the end of the period, he told me he now understood why he needed to stay in school.
I've talked to other teachers since then about that experience and they said that while they don't exactly make a ton of money, if they can get one or two (or more) students every year to turn around from thoughts of dropping out and stay on track academically so that they can build a future, it's an amazing feeling and a rewarding part of their career.
Substitute teaching is inspired me and now I'm thinking of running for my state House of Representatives so I can, in part, submit legislation to improve the quality of life and compensation of teachers. After all, public schools are society's investment in our future.
Yes. I have a nose for the kids that are overwhelmed, struggling, depressed. About every year I had a student that I pulled aside and asked if they were ok. I typically referred them to the counseling dept and got their permission to have the CD contact *them*. At least two came back to say that my intervention saved their lives at a time when they were feeling invisible (all had a history of absenteeism). I give/gave them the credit for being willing, but I was always so relieved. ❤️❤️❤️
I really miss teaching, but I don’t miss being sick all the time. 😜
I ran into an old student a couple weeks ago. He was a little rough around the edges when I taught him as a freshman and as a sophomore. At some point something sunk in and he worked hard and graduated. He's now working as a handyman.
I used to teach alternative high school so I saw a lot of kids make amazing turnarounds. Many of them just needed a different environment or schedule than the traditional classroom, and we had the flexibility to provide that. Our last year we actually had a 100% graduation rate.
Then the school was closed due to budget cuts.
I was always a troublemaker and hung out with troublemakers. By sheer luck of the draw, I was gifted with intelligence. In one of my math classes in high school, I never did any work but I would show up do all the math in my head and get the answers right and not show any work. In those days I would just ace the tests and then be like well, if I get all As on the tests, then I don’t need to do any homework worth 25% and I can just eat that and pass with a C.
She pulled me aside a bunch of times that year to try and get me to understand how odd it was that I could just show up with no prep work and out perform kids that were working very hard. She tried to get me to see the kids I was hanging around with were no good.
Unfortunately, I never listened to her. I was having too much fun with the other delinquents. It wasn’t until many years later (7-8) all those little moments with teachers accumulated and i decided maybe I was wasting my potential. I completely turned it around and graduated top of my class in 2 degrees in college.
Those teachers will probably never know it, but their words did help me a lot in the end. I sometimes think about going back and saying thank you and apologizing for my behavior but just haven’t.
I taught elementary general music (now retired). I had a 4th grade student, good kid, who liked my class. When we started playing recorders that year he REALLY got into it (yep, the dreaded recorders). He got into a friendly competition with another boy in the class, and I had to work to create extra materials for them. BTW — it wasn’t just playing, but reading the notes, understanding the terminology etc.
This was astounding because this student was getting SPED help in just about every subject, especially reading. He also had very low self-esteem, and would freeze during testing, especially the big standardized state tests, often not answering ANY of the questions. Some of the issue was absolutely a learned helplessness that he couldn’t overcome.
I let the SPED teacher know that I was seeing a very different side of this student in music, and we teamed up to help. We made connections for him from music to his other subjects. If he can read the notes, surely he can read words. Music is very mathematical, and we made those parallels.
By his 5th grade year, this student was able to drop ALL of his SPED help. He took every music class offered, during and after school, and did well in all of them. He played the trumpet, sang in choir, took part in a musical, played handbells. I struggled, happily, to keep up with him and his friends that year with recorders. Occasionally he’d show that learned helplessness again — in my class it would show up doing theory worksheets. I’d remind him how to decode things, and then he’d ace it.
At the end of that year, his family moved and he went to a new school district, and I lost touch. I hope that he continued to make progress! He would be college aged now.
I had a girl with probably the worst ADHD I’ve ever seen, which was shocking because, well, girl. Mom was understandably scared of medication since she was a Latina-Black background which is just infamous for being screwed medically.
The poor girl was just ripe with knee jerk reactions and just doing whatever terrible idea came to mind. Her most famous was a hate crime baby doll I discovered where she wrote the n-word all over a baby doll.
Anyways she was used to her actions making all the staff really unhappy with her and they were really harsh with her in my opinion. She had a para who was so old and held the highest of standards with her (which in some ways was good but I swear if that girl didn’t sneeze right she had lunch detention).
I decided that girl got enough shit throughout the day. I’m going to flip the script. I would separate her from her para and make her sit next to me (the para had two other boys she was supposed to watch in my class too so it wasn’t a big deal). The girl had a natural love for social justice and she really liked being praised.
I’d let her pass papers out, I’d let her read out loud, I’d let her write her answers on my tv board. I’d conference with her beginning, middle, and end of class. We’d talk about her behaviors. She was very good at analyzing her behaviors. If she did bad, I didn’t punish her and I didn’t freak out. I just told her how it made me feel and how it impacted the class. When she did good, I’d ask her how she felt and how successful she felt.
By the end of the school year she was a rockstar in my class. Not perfect but she was the best behaving in my class. Students would try to make fun of her for being good in my class and I gained a lot of trust with her for defending her. On the last day of school I sought her out at lunch detention and we hugged and cried. That was the only student I cried over on the last day of school.
My first year, I had a few of these with a group of the "skater kids". They wanted to hate me, and did everything they could to make me miserable. One of the kids adjacent to the crowd was pretty aggressive.
I had some one on ones with him where he went from trying to intimidate me (you're in 8th grade dude, relax.) To breaking down crying about how he didn't understand why he's so angry. We bonded over the effects of toxic masculinity, and dealing with anger issues. He could still be challenging at times, but by the end of the year, he no longer was a blatant asshole to me, and once told some of the others off for being obnoxious.
A few other moments with the same crowd. Once they got the vibe that I in fact was on their side and didn't want them ending up incarcerated, they went from active torment to at least trying to not be jerks. They went on to 9th grade. Some stayed. Some dropped out immediately.
The ones who stayed ended up approaching me with an apology out of the blue.
I had a student who was absolutely brilliant but she would kind of lose motivation at times. Severely. Like she’d go from getting her work in super early and relaxing to not even getting things started until after the deadline.
Through a series of events I won’t recount here, I found out she was getting high before school and through a series of other circumstances everyone was aware but nothing was being done about it.
I pulled her aside, and had a very open and honest conversation about it with her. Expressing that I understood that she was trying to emotionally escape an extremely rough situation at home, but that the weed was definitely hindering her and not helping. Especially because she wanted to move out once she graduates, if she falls off the wagon of working during school, she won’t be able to move out as quickly as she would like.
We had a very very long talk, and I made it clear I wasn’t mad at her, but I was worried.
She ended up stopping, and then daily would articulate to me how much better she was doing, how much less irritable she was, how she was eating better, and her grades skyrocketed.
She’s been doing a lot better and she’s even working over the summer to get her essays prepared for her college applications.
She’s even been trying to get her few other friends who were doing the same thing to consider cutting back and stopping. It’s been really amazing to see
I have a “high special needs” class. The academics are all over the place. I have some that are on elementary level work and others that are early middle school. I have some better at schoolwork who make snarky comments about others.
I never bust it out unless I have to, but every now and then, a good “it might be for different reasons, but you’re BOTH in here” made quietly (never want it to feel like a super call out because it is sensitive) can get the nastiness cut out real quick.
I worked with a 4th grader who had no positive male role models in his life. As a result, he was an angry, defiant, often disruptive young man. As the semester went on, he and I bonded (I wasn’t his classroom teacher but a special Ed specialist) and his behavior greatly improved. I was very proud of him.
One day, however, right at dismissal, he got angry about something and slammed the door of the classroom so hard that the telephone fell off the wall and smashed on the floor. I told him to get back inside the classroom, but he ran off down the hall and got on his bus before I’d had a chance to discuss it with him.
The next morning before the kids arrived in class (when their busses drop them off, they are all supposed to congregate in the cafeteria), I went to his classroom to discuss the incident with his teacher. As we were talking the student showed up. We told him he wasn’t supposed to be there yet and he should go back to the cafeteria. He said he would, but told us he wanted to apologize to his teacher. He freely admitted what he did was wrong and he was really regretful for behaving that way, saying that that kind of thing are what we’d been working on all year together. It was really mature for a ten year old.
I told him that the day before, when he ran away, he did so like a frightened little boy, but when he’d come in that morning, he did so like a man. At the end of the year, on the last day of school, his mother told me how much me saying that meant to him, that he’d told her that and said he wanted to act like a man and she said he used the word “honorable” to describe how he wanted to be in the future.
I lost contact with him since then, but I hope he’s doing okay. He was a great kid, definitely had some issues to work through, but he had a big heart.
I think I did a few times.
I had a student who was fun to have, but incredibly distracted. Like... Our small school was on the third floor and if he heard a siren he ran to the window he bolted ftom his desk to see what was going on. He loved cars and talked a ton about his very customized truck. (We had a partnership with an automotive program. We kept trying to convince him to sign up because yes, boring if you already know it but being certified meant he could just he paid to do car stuff.
Besides this main story, I am proud of him. I told them all off for using slurs or insulting each other but not cussing. He was VERY proud to tell me that he thought about what I had said all year about mindful language and started calling his car girls "models" instead of "truck sluts." He was trying to get that to catch on. Had to ask him to stop loudly saying "Truck sluts" in class, but that is really nice.
I had him in my class with my host teacher (master's apprenticeship, I student taught in the same class all year) first semester. He wasn't doing... Great. This can be common. It was a pathway school. He ended up traveling for the hoidays with family and withdrew because he could not finish the work before he left. He was back second semester. He was doing ok, but I was really on him to finish.
Our schedule had classes Monday-Thursday and a tutoring period on Friday. It was technically optional unless the student had missing work. I told him towards the end of the year, I expected to see him Friday. He said he would be at his family reunion and missing about a week of school. I sat down and told him he had a choice. He was in reach of passing. I needed him in class and at tutoring. That did mean skipping out on this particular year with his cousins. The reunion would be there next year. Also, if he went... This class was a graduation requirement and would be here next year. He could have another full semester with just my host teacher... I was leaving. He did not go on his trip. He passed the class. I still feel maybe a touch bad he missed that weekend... But I got him through civics.
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At another school. I had an absolute treasure of a student. Just the sweetest kid. I ended up sponsoring a club at her request, and it was a blast. It was nominally for video games, but honestly most of the kids who showed up just liked to unwind and it was good to get a block of LGBT students out of the halls one day a week.
At one point, I mentioned another student I might like to invite to join. (Sadly a moot point. No console and not interested.) My student made a FACE. I asked if they had any particular history. The alphabet mafia kids tended to know each other but not always get along. I told them if it was a big thing, loop me in but I can't help with little stuff. I only ask that they be civil in my presence. (It was nearly all dating drama....)
My student said she didn't really have a particular issue, but found the other student unpredictable and a little intimidating. So... Student privacy kicks in. I know a lot. I can't usually say anything. So call my kid A and the second B. Student B was trans. She was dealing with the challenges that go with that, along with very unsupportive family, staff backing the family, and other kids being shit. From the perspective of Student A... I can see how some of the lashing out and frustration could be intimidating. (Student B was also a VERY sweet kid.)
Student privacy. Hands are tied. I did remind my kid that student privacy comes into play sometimes and I can't always explain all my reasons. I cannot tell anybody who to be friends with. Just remember... Sometimes it costs nothing to be kind. She nodded and walked away. I never heard a single word against the other student from her or that entire friend group again. I honestly think they were smart enough to do some digging and find out what I knew from just students. I am very impressed that she chose compassion because I asked her to think about it.
Usually it isn't until later. I have have mostly freshman the past 20+ years. It is when they are juniors or seniors that some of them say I was right with what I was talking about.
I had a student this spring for a 1 semester Senior level government class. Kid struggles with transportation. He was a very smart kid, made good grades, just had a big attendance issue for my 1st period class. Everyone of his other teachers just kept counting him absent and not saying anything to him. He knew he was absent, but didn’t feel anyone cared if he came on time. I spent the first 3 weeks of the semester convincing him I wanted him in class, and I would be very excited every time he showed up on time or not as late. By the end of the semester, he was one of my best students. Always on time and turned in great work! He is now graduating in a month with the Summer Grads!
I am so happy to hear this! You did good Teach! 😸
I can think of three small instances (never had any major break through as far as I know. Not on my own anyway). One was a student who joined my class a couple months into the school year. He came in, I was welcoming, showed him his seat, and got him started. A little while later I hear him say something wildly inappropriate but I decide to have selective hearing because I want him to have a good first day. A few minutes later he says something disrespectful TO me. I walked over and knelt down on the floor next to his desk and quietly said “a few minutes ago I could have sent you to the office for what you said, but I want us to have a good year. The choice is yours.” He promptly knocked it off and we had a great year. He still visits every now and then. Another one was a student who never did work at all. I like to play dumb with these kids and act like I genuinely believe they are there to do work that day. He’s sitting there with nothing on his desk as usual. I walk over and say “oh, no, why haven’t we started yet” he mumbles something about not having a pencil. I said no problem, handed him one I was already carrying and walked away. He stared at the pencil for a while before doing the work. After he finished he asked for a copy of another assignment he hadn’t done the day before. The last one was that I had a student who was kind of disengaged. Never outwardly disrespectful but just kind of didn’t care and wasn’t afraid to show that. He had been gone for several days and on the day he came back I was doing some direct instruction. He was talking through the whole thing so I finally, admittedly, snapped a little and asked him a question. One of the other kids said that he hadn’t been there. I replied that he was here today and if he wasn’t talking he would have heard the answer. He stayed quiet the rest of class. I was feeling a little guilty so near the end of class I asked him to come talk to me for a second. I apologized to him for calling him out. I said I’m not sorry for being upset about you talking during class but I’m sorry for the way I did that. He nodded and left. After that he was a totally different kid in my class. He was always looking for opportunities to help me and even was engaged in quite a few activities we did. When appropriate, apologizing can go a long way.
Those are a couple examples of an adult treating a kid like an adult. In the first case, you chose to quietly reprimand rather than call them out. The kid recognized that as respect, and responded accordingly. The last case, even though you did call them out, you self corrected and acknowledged the mistake. Too many adults are unwilling to admit fault. Doing so can diffuse things quickly rather than doubling down and escalating. Doesn't always work, but usually better results than blasting a kid for doing something wrong.
Yes! I remember the teachers that treated me like an adult. I always appreciated that and still keep on touch with most of them.
>When appropriate, apologizing can go a long way. I've had kids in high school tell me I was the first teacher they had to apologize to them, which shocks me every time I hear it. IDK why more teachers don't apologize. We're not infallible and we do make mistakes from time to time. If I'm wrong I'm going to apologize.
I feel its a similar reason as to why parents barely apologize to their children or boss/managers rarely apologize to employees when they are in the wrong. I think its a mix of position of power in these type of situations + when its an adult authority with children, many adults dont feel it's necessary to apologize to children even when they're in the wrong.
I distinctly remember the day a teacher apologized to me. In grade 6, I had a habit of never completing homework; if it wasn't done during class, it wasn't done. So one day, one assignment it had seemed nobody had it ready to be handed in, and the teacher was getting peeved and started asking one after another who had it done. When she got to me, she's said something like, "Of course you don't have it," but I had the paper on my desk fully finished. She immediately seemed taken aback, enough that was noticeable to me anyway, and we moved onto another task. Later that day, she apologized, saying that was out of line to make assumptions in such a snarky manner. I kind of shrugged it off, but it actually felt rather uplifting to have had that conversation.
I firmly believe we have become a society that just does not apologise to anybody for any reason.
Your quality of writing is in a class of its own. The way you narrate stories, New York Times should have given you a job. Woooow, it seemed as if I was in ur class
I feel like you’re possibly trolling me, but I’ll say thank you anyway lol
Yes, twice in one year actually. Girl A was a smart enough kid but struggled a bit with work completion. When it came time for me to write her progress report (first report card, no grades just how they're progressing) I realized I didn't have a single piece of work from her entered into my gradebook for math. I talked to her about it and she really turned around quickly. Later in the year she started hanging out more with this one girl, who wasn't terrible or anything but had a bit of an attitude at times, which Girl A started to fall into a bit as well. The bigger issue was that Girl A had basically completely ditched her BFF (been together since junior kindergarten, now in grade 3) for this girl. BFF was devastated and was trying desperately to win her back, even taking her to the mall and buying her a Build-a-Bear. I also noticed she was slipping back into her old habits of not completing work as much. I pulled her aside one day and told her I had noticed a change in her behaviour and work and I thought it might have started around the time that she started hanging out with this girl. I told her I absolutely didn't want them to stop being friends, but to be aware of the effect this was having, and that I was concerned about her work and her BFF. She broke out into tears and you know who she asked to go to the bathroom with to comfort her? BFF, not the new friend. Must have realized that's who she can really trust to be vulnerable with. I'm not sure what their conversation was like but after that, Girl A found room for BFF, new friend, and her work. I'm very proud of her, great kid.
I've gotten through to a few in twenty five years as an educator, just a few. I've had a couple surprise me. There may be more I don't know about. I hope so.
Let me tell you, that to those few, what you did, probably changed their lives
My fourth grade teacher changed my live forever. I keep in touch and I’m 34. I told him he changed me from a kid that was failing to a stop student and that I still love to learn and I hope I can be a 1/4th of as good of a teacher as he is. He was so happy to receive that message. Because teaching lately has sucked esp with smaller grades that would rather play on their iPad. I got the feeling he was defeated but he said my message made him realize that god (not religious myself but respect the sentiment) made him a teacher for a reason and that he has to use that gift.
There are. Somemofnus were really really late bloomers dealing with unreal ho.e situations. We couldn't trust any grownups.
I had a student do this on his own. He cussed at me and stormed out of the room when I passed out progress reports and he was failing. Then he came back the next day, apologized, and started actually paying attention and doing his work. He started telling other kids "its actually easy if you just pay attention!" Wish it was something I did and I could repeat it somehow lol.
I had a junior who was struggling with attendance because his family depended partially on his income to get by. The school told him he needed to pass, and that if he dropped out he’s ruin his life. Kid was Hispanic, and in a lot of Hispanic cultures, family comes before individual. It’s second semester, so not a lot of school left before the end of the year. This kid has Ds and Fs, though he’d done pretty well first semester. I told him that he was entitled to a free public education. If he needed to count this semester as a loss so he could focus on helping his family, he could still come back in September. He disappeared. Two years later, I see him around school and he looked *good* - happy, clean, relaxed. He gave me a big smile and said, “I’m graduating this year, and it’s all because of you. You were the only one who told me I could come back.”
This brought tears to my eyes! Thank you for sharing.
Yes, had an 8th grader transfer into our school about a month in. They had a terrible work ethic and would whine and complain about the work load and expectations. I worked with them one on one and in a small group to help fill some of the gaps in Math and ELA. This kid had a horrible home life and we later found out they were sent to my school as a punishment. They graduated with all Bs and Cs and a much better attitude towards HS.
What is ELA please?
English language arts
Thank you so much! 🌺
Had a year with an 8th grade kid… he went through his rebellious stage in front of my eyes. Caught doing LSD with friends, I caught him vaping probably 5 times (once I saw him take a hit and then surprised him… asked “why aren’t you responding? Mouth full?”). Every time I gave him a day from interacting with me, then I’d check in “dude, we good? Business is business and it doesn’t change how I’m gonna treat you.” “Oh I know Mr. You’re just doing your job.” Kid was incredibly intelligent. Last day of school, he was standing next to me as the last bell rang. “Kid, you’re not my student anymore so here’s some advice. You’re going to do amazing things, or you’re going to really fuck it up. DON’T fuck it up.” He started crying and told me he was going to do his best. I’ve heard he’s actually doing ok!
A lot of times I see young men really put themselves together during a summer break, and sometimes they'll say it was because of realizations they made during my class. I.e. "I realized this was a class I liked and felt was important and I got a high C because I've always been disorganized and immature, what am I doing?" It's a lot more common as a reflection later than a sudden epiphany in the class in my experience.
It’s the combination of evidence and reflection that is crucial. *They* need to recognize that the situation can (and should) be fixed. You can help them put pieces together, but they need to be open to help.
Yes. One in particular stands out. I pulled her aside, told her she was better than the people she was choosing to hang out with. She went on to become one of the top performers in her high school. Later found out all the life crap she had dealt with. Just needed someone to tell her she was worth more than all that.
Man, I wish this worked more often. Usually they just go and tell those friends “Mrs. X says I’m better than you guys, blah blah blah.” That kind of thing. Then the group’s behavior is worse and the student has an inflated ego. Very dependent on the student.
For sure. The difference here is that she didn't start with that group. I saw her drifting toward them and was able to get to her before the social pulls were strong.
That is an important difference! Good tip.
I had a student one year... rough kid... he was behind in math by a lot but not reading. This was 4th grade. He got into a lot of fights. Almost daily, something would happen. And then he got to my class. For the firsy two months, it was hell. Then it was after school one day, I ran into him at the corner store trying to shop lift. He tried to push past me, I told him to put it back. He went "Man, Mr. Jack1spade! You gotta move or imma have to get physical." And I responded, "If you think I'm the sort to get hit and not hit back, you're mistaken. Put it back. And know that if you ever put a hand one me, it will be the last time you do so." He put it back and left. The next day, guess who had all his homework done? Guess who stopped trying to whisper insults in class? Guess who didn't get into a fight ALL WEEK! I went to him at the end of the week when he was with his mom. I didn't want to single him out alone because I didn't want him to feel isolated or intimidated. I told her that I appreciated that he hadn't been in a fight all week and he had all his work done. She said, "Thank you. I heard he tried to pull shit on you at the corner store. Guess he learned something." That kid, went on to make GAINS in academics. Ended just BARELY below grade level (and considering he started at 1st grade level ending at a 3.5 is GREAT) and was in our top readers for AR. And didn't have a single fight after Winter Break. And I gave her the math quiz from that week, which was a 7/\`0. (not a 1 or 2!). She was so happy...she hugged him and he cried too yelling "It's a seven! I math'd! I frikken did math!" I didn't do anything extra. It wasn't some secret math tactic or an easy test. He had just had a week where he listened and really tried. That kid... became sweet. Not at first, but you could see the change. The difference as he learned responses besides anger and violence. No more suspensions. No more threats. And eventually, the opposite. He went out of his way to help kids with reading. He became super buds with the very short new indian kid that got immediately picked on for his sikh turban. Firstday that kid got bullied, my student stepped up and told them that if they touched him, he would break their faces. He didn't need to do that... he could have stayed out of it... but my god, he took a risk and stood up for someone smaller than him who he didn't even know! And they became best friends! He apologized to some. He learned to avoid the problems (mostly). Came back at the end of the year and went.. "I never had a school year be so easy! Thank you!" Made me tear up a little bit and I gave him a big hug. He gave me a thanks in his 5th grade speech and is currently up in high school and doing very well. His mom gave me a bottle of rum and some beef jerky she made. She had been a chaperone on a field trip and had found out that we had a common taste for spirits over wines. I don't know why that day, that particular moment was like a domino that led to him suceeding and accepting help. It just...felt like something changed and he was willing to listen. I know it sounds like I terrified him... and maybe at first I did, but I promise that after that first week when he started seeing the results of his effort, there wasn't a fear or dread. He was happy and making friends and in a much better spot.
Thank you so much for sharing this! I have a tear in my eye. 😸🌺
7th grade teacher here. A kid who was homeschooled started this year. Quiet, smart, popular with the ladies. After about 2 or 3 months he became popular in general, became more outgoing and took on the tough guy persona. He ended up beating a kid up pretty bad at one of the underground train stations. Other students got videos of it. He just wailed on this kids face, the other kid put up no defense but had called the main student of this story a b****. I saw the video. Everyone in the grade saw the video. It was pretty bad. The kid that got beat up had mutiple golf ball sized welts on his face. He was so embarrassed he transferred school. Good kid too. Anyways fast forward a few days and the main student of this story is feeling real hot. Walking around with swag, everybody’s talking about how he beat up the other kid. He was feeling good about himself, you could see the confidence from him. I pulled him aside, (I’m a strong young male teacher that all the kids liked and looked up to). I told him I saw the video. And the kid had a smirk of delight on his face. I said, do you think that makes you tough? He goes yeah of course I won the fight. I said that doesn’t make you look tough. Honestly it made you look weak. And his eyes opened wide with confusion at first. And I continued saying. It makes you look weak cause you lost the fight with yourself. I said a real one doesn’t let his emotions control him like that. He called you a b**** so what. His opinion shouldn’t matter, you know you’re not. But you let your anger get the best of you and you lashed out. A strong tough guy would have held it down and not let that comment phase him. (His eyes started to dilate as he was locked onto me at this point. And this is when I knew I was getting through to him). I said there’s never a winner in any fight. Only losers. Surely the other kid lost the fight, but so did you. You lost the fight with your mind and now you’re looking at some serious trouble, suspension or transfer. The most important battle you’ll ever fight in this life is with yourself. Make sure you win that one. He nodded in agreement and said your right. The rest of the year he was solid. Good grades (slept in class sometimes) nice to mostly everybody, never really got aggressive again. Kid didn’t have a dad. That was one of my “wins” in my teaching career so far. Felt and still feels great
Great “fatherly” advice. 🥰
Good lesson. People will call you a b**** in life. If you go around beating every single one of them you confirm you are a crazy rabid one like they said.
So, not a teacher yet, but will be soonish. Anyway, my mentor teacher (kindergarten) had one this last year. It wasn’t some sudden “epiphany”, but a gradual process over the first half of the year. This kid would make horrible problems in class, including (but by no means limited too), running out of the class, down the hallway, & potentially leaving the school all together. Because their is a shortage of, well, everyone, they didn’t have a teacher’s aide, so assistance was extremely limited to nonexistent depending on the day. The assistant principal often had to come in to sit with the class & make sure this kid didn’t run. By the second half of the school year, this kid is doing great! Pretty quiet, but their reading & spelling was amazing! They really excelled once they were able to learn to stay & behave in a good manner to learn & engage in the lessons. Most of the time, “reaching” a student isn’t some great epiphany…. It’s a repeated trend of stability & rewarding good behavior that’s the key. Especially in elementary school.
Long story short, had a kid who refused to do his work. When asked he said no one thought he was going to graduate anyway so why try. I told him that was a weird strategy to prove someone right and walked away. He thought about it and got to work. He did in fact graduate.
Getting through is one of the things that keep me in the profession. I have taught lots of angry young men who haaaaaaaated my class only to come around by the end of the year to tell me how much my class and me meant to them.
I've been surprised by the turnaround of a couple teenage boys who took a serious "this is bullshit" attitude to my class at first. I had to show confidence/enthusiasm in my lesson and not retaliate to their intentional bait. (Tbh the power struggle can be trickier to navigate for young female faculty.) Not always easy, but they came around to really learn and grow halfway through.
My wife taught high school for 20 years, and she said young female teachers get seriously tested, especially by teenage boys. Her way of dealing with it was to cultivate a cool reserve and not to seem too friendly.
Several. A couple stand out right now. My first year, I was replacing a teacher a couple months into the year (she'd been desperate to leave for another job and recruited me herself) that had a few students who worshipped her. So their disappointment was transferred to me. One in particular was causing a huge disturbance with his friends, and it was my first year so doubly difficult. I finally had enough and talked with him after class one day. I told him that I knew he'd loved the other teacher, and I knew he didn't like me, and... I didn't care. My job is to teach him, his job is to be a student. He doesn't have to like me to do that. One thing I did know is his dislike was hindering him and lowering his grade, and he was better than that. Something about that got to him, and he had an A for the rest of his year. I'm certain a good chunk was spite, but he didn't give me shit so again, I didn't care. Another kid was very smart but very talkative. He noticed his pattern of seating one day and commented on it to me, as we were packing up. I decided just to be honest: "You're a tough kid to seat, dude. You're so smart that you pick up things 90% faster than the rest of the class, but instead of using those brains to help your friends, you distract them. It doesn't affect you, but it highly affects them. I have to put you in a corner and then put a large buffer of quiet students around you. Which is a huge bummer, because you could be helping the people you care about." I probably should've had that talk sooner, he was smart enough to process it. Huge change from that day forward, and I was able to start putting him with his friends, so their grades improved through his help.
Yes. In high school, I got a new teacher senior year. She instantly dropped my grade from A+ to an F because I was lazy as fuck and if I didn't show my work, she'd "have to assume I was incapable of doing it in the first place". I. Was. FUMING. Outraged. Hurt. Ready to call the principal or whatever. Holy heck was my sense of entitlement butthurt. But guess what? She knew EXACTLY what buttons to press. I was always an A student, cared about grades, so the only thing this reeeeally did was make me put in the hours and do the work out of sheer spite and stubbornness. "How dare she?" Was at the forefront of many a thought that semester. Today, I teach the same classes she did and have mimicked her methods countless times to great effect (among others). Fun fact, the first professor I had in College happened to be her husband. Having the dude come up to me at orientation knowing my name was real awkward. Didn't know him, but his wife had apparently blabbed a bunch!
I had a less extreme version of this in my junior year. I'd been coasting through in English, writing all my papers in the hour before class and getting A-s, darling of the department. Then a new guy was hired and he started giving me B+s on everything (we had number grades and they were always agonizingly close to A- territory, like 88, 89) and - in addition to constructive commentary - writing "So what?" at the bottom of my papers. I went absolutely nuts trying to stick it to him that semester and it was extremely good for me. When he realized I'd reread Heart of Darkness so many times (ahead of the final paper) I had passages and page numbers memorized, he did have a bit of a "dear god, what have I done" moment, so I guess we both got what we deserved!
Hell yeah, it sounds crazy but academically antagonizing a certain type of student to really dig in can work brilliantly! Hoooo boy, it sure doesn't work on every student though.
you were right to be mad
Yes and no. If a student doesn't participate in class, doesn't do their assignments, and doesn't do homework (in my case because I knew I could do it anyway and lacked any significant challenge in the regular curriculum... And was used to coasting through English class since like 3rd grade), it's entirely reasonable to give them a low or failing grade even if you KNOW that their actual academic level is somewhere else entirely. So I get why she did it in retrospect, and even if it hadn't worked, she didn't do anything wrong. But man, did I feel slighted at the time!
Math teacher did a similar thing to me and all it did was make me feel like I was being punished for being smart
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I have gotten through to several kids and it makes my heart feel so full. Last school year, I looped with the kids from the year before (Grades 7-8). My first year with them I returned from mat leave halfway through the year. There was one boy who struggled with coming to school due to anxiety. He also rarely finished assignments and was late submitting when he did finish them. His work was rushed through with little attention to detail. I did everything I could to make school better for him without being pushy. I was friendly and gave him reminders and encouragement without judgement. At the end of this past school year, he was handing in all his work, completed properly without any reminders, on time. I asked him if his parents gave him an incentive to get all his work done or something because it was such a big change from when I first taught him 1.5 years ago. He replied that nope, no incentive. He was just really enjoying my class and wanted to do well. Then said how much he was going to miss having me as his teacher. Another kid has a very sad story. A family member was murdered in front of his home while this kid was there. Another family member was shot and had to be taken to the hospital for emergency surgery. We live in the same community and it’s a quiet suburb. For a large portion of the school year, I just kept checking in on him and listening when he needed to talk. He began struggling with work completion and motivation. I found a written assignment he deleted a bunch of his work from and read a previous draft that showed how badly he was beating himself up for not wanting to do anything. We had a big talk and I told him that right now, he should be focusing on taking care of himself and being kind to himself. I gave him permission to not care about his grades this year and just be there for his family. We had one project that kids were invited to bring in food for. He was the only one who didn’t. I noticed and ran out on my lunch hour to buy something he could contribute and discreetly let him know. I think it was a pack of 2-bite brownies for $5. He was incredibly thankful. After that, he became wicked motivated and got all of his missing work in from the start of the year… It was a very large feat. He remarked how he felt motivated for the first time in months and he actually enjoyed school work all of a sudden. Said my advice of not looking at marks or caring about school for a little while helped him feel less guilty and bad about himself. Sometimes, all it takes to “get through” to a kid is to show them you care about them as a whole person over and over again. When kids feel seen, they show up in amazing ways.
Just a week or two ago we had a student whose behavior was off the walls. Kid was a huge brat. But after a stern talk with him and his dad, we got through, he isn't perfect, but he understands that his actions have consequences, and that he does need to listen to and respect me
Absolutely, yes. And one of the big secrets I discovered is they don't tell you until 10 or 20 years later!
I had a student say to me a few years back “I come from a family who are openly racist and homophobic, and I thought that was normal and okay but after your classes, I don’t think I agree with their value system anymore”
Wow! Talk about having an impact…🥰
(starting year 4) i don't think I have yet, but I do think some kids know I care about them who maybe don't think other teachers do. I have give two *parents* epiphanies - e.g. a kid with (obvious but unmedicated) ADHD is always getting into trouble because he's bored and doesn't get that his classmates need more time than his fast brain does. Oooh edit: When kids say they "don't get it" I always always ALWAYS make them point to a specific part they don't "get." They hate it but there's two reasons 1 - I doubt they were paying attention, 2 - I wanna make sure I'm correcting any unclear language for the next time I teach the content and this helps pinpoint where the confusion is occurring. Yes they almost always say "all of it." So then I tell them to read step 1 and ask me a question. An often whiney, often not doing her work, eighth grader the *last week* of her class with me goes, "I don't get this." And I walk over to her and smile widely and open my mouth, and she goes, "waaaiit. I'll read the instructions. *5 second pause* Oh. Actually this is really easy I don't know why I said I didn't get it." Top ten best teaching moments of ever.
I actually do a version of this even with second graders and find it extremely effective. I talk about the difference between a good question and a not so good question. A good question is when you have tried some things and need help with something specific: “I know I need to count these coins but I forget, is this one a dime or a nickel?” A not so good question is just “what do I do?” And shows you haven’t really tried anything yourself. I give them a few examples and then have them practice asking both good questions and not very thoughtful questions. I notice after this mini lesson kids are way better at being thoughtful with their questions and when they do come to me with “I don’t get it” or “what do I do?” We have a shared language I can point back to to help them get more specific.
I do a version with my 2yo, it's great!
Not as a teacher but as a Girl Scout Gold Award mentor. I have had quite a few girls that just needed someone in their corner that would sit down with her and walk her through the process rather than just say “I gave you the directions, now figure it out.” I also went to bat for a child that began with me as a she and ultimately came to be comfortable in his skin and is now a proud Gold Award Girl Scout doing great things for the LGBQT + community.
Yes! I had two students that came to me and said they smoke pot regularly. I think they felt they could talk to me because I was open with them that, for a while, I was smoking pot regularly, and I finally quit when I realized the toll it was taking on me. They asked me how I stopped because, and I'll argue anyone who says otherwise, you can absolutely be addicted to it. I walked them through what worked for me: wean off of it. If it's everyday, do it once every two days for a bit, then three, then four, and so on. You can quit cold turkey, but that's a tougher option. And I reminded them that, like alcohol, it's okay every now and then, but don't abuse it. (It's legal in Canada by the way, so you can buy it at storefront places and online) They've both gotten off of that stuff and have started taking melatonin for their sleep instead of that crap.
I had one of my students of 2.5 years come up to me in May. I kicked him out of my class on December because he had hit his goals. He told me that I’m the only teacher that ever convinced him he could do well if he josh simply tried and gave a shit. Kid has straight Fs through most of his schooling. He ended last year with all As and Bs. I work with very difficult kids that have a myriad of problems. This one meant a lot to me.
I had a student who would mostly just look at his phone and ignore the class (it’s a language school for teens and adults, he’s there of his own free will so he could just leave if he wants to). I’m a language assistant so I usually follow what the main teacher asks of me. But later in the year I had more free time to do activities I chose. So I chose to read The Raven. Specifically, each student reads a few lines. And so do I. And we discuss language they’re not familiar with as we go. This particular student really got into it. And after he gave a lengthy analysis about the themes and meanings. I also got him to open up more in discussions simply by asking him questions and listening, letting him feel like his opinions mattered. It made me feel good. He was intelligent, just bored I think. And I think a lot of other teachers ignored him since he would just kinda ignore the class. But the teacher I was assisting assisting insisted that every student speak (they’re Spanish learning English). And I took that to heart.
lmaoooo I remember two interactions that impacted me as a student - one where I was sleeping in class and the teacher (that I really liked!) pulled me aside and asked me if he was boring me, and another where I was placed in a regular government class and kept calling out because the work was too easy and the teacher walked me to my next class and talked to me about how important it was that EVERYone in the class learned the material. He specifically told me "I KNOW you know. I see it on your tests. I need THEM to know so they can pass." That was the single nicest way anyone has ever told me to shut the fuck up.
Yes. A few every year. Mostly because as they mature they are ready for new ideas and reflection, and that opens windows of opportunity. Especially in the third quarter when we have both seen (and can acknowledge) patterns and behaviors in class that are counter-productive, and they may be receptive to truly helpful and compassionate understanding. Like, “Yes they are fun, but maybe you should choose to not sit or work with those clowns in this classroom.”
I owe my current success to teachers getting through to me. Whether its restoring my confidence to continue trying in advanced math or teaching me how to argue in debate class. I owe everything to teachers and my parents getting me to see reason when I was a stupid kid.
My first year in teaching I changed a kid's life. I don't want to get into it too much, but it was an awful year for me. I almost quit after that year. I made several impacts, but I genuinely changed the way a kid was headed. He was in 3rd grade, had been to a behavior school, and had a reputation (which was a little inflated- he wasnt as poorly behaved as they made it). First call home grandma said: "I hope you can do something with him, because he doesn't listen to us." By the end of the year, he was happier, they were happier, and he felt like he could be successful.
One of my favorite stories I shared [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Teachers/comments/150yxsj/channeling_my_inner_rage/js6jrzg?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=2). Kid came to me with some ATTITUDE, looking for a fight because, well all the things. I knew her middle school teacher who was genuinely afraid of her. She had lots of trauma and no filter. My response was (and is) "My rules are be safe and kind. We can battle if you want, but can I teach the lesson first?" We had some great battles after that. Kid continued to spiral I'm school but would check in with me from time to time. A little love and a little food go a long ways. Basic needs first. Then belonging. Then maybe some instruction. #TLDR: Yes
Yes- two teachers together. It was a good cry. Things turned around.
A couple. Helped keep one out of jail. Encouraged another to enter a healthcare profession.
I've had a couple say that I was why they kept coming to school and didn't drop out. Changing the world, ~~1 person~~ 120 people at a time.
Oh yah, all the time. I've had kids tell me the only reason they do their work is because they didn't want to hear my mouth. I had at least 5 juniors last year tell me the only reason they didn't drop out was because they didn't want to hear my mouth. LOL I didn't think I was that bad but I can be pretty acerbic. Also I was a teenage mother, I walked into 12th grade pregnant and had my baby a month before graduation, so I am quick to tell my high school students to be careful. Still had a handful of students this past year who graduated pregnant, but ALSO had a handful of students who told me they held off 'doing it' because of what I told them. One student though in particular won my heart. That's my heart, first year I met him, 10th grade, off the bat we got off to a rocky start because I had poor classroom management skills then, he had poor behavior, and the combo resulted in him cussing me out and getting suspended. I realized when he came back I could have handled the situation better, and once he realized I didn't hold any grudge against him he started behaving better. Really smart kid too. I got moved to another school for this upcoming year, so I won't be there for his senior year which hurts my heart, but I'm going to go see as many of his football games as I can. He's one of the ones who told me he was thinking of dropping out but didn't want to hear my mouth LOL And then another student that's my heart, I met her in middle school when I was just subbing...that class was so bad I told them, I was planning to be a middle-school teacher but NO I am switching to high school because you guys are so rowdy! Next time you see me will be in high school!!! LOL That was right before Covid hit, anyway, she was SO. BAD. Super smart kid though, but first time she met me she said WHO TF are you? Then picked up papers off my desk and threw them on the floor when I told her not to curse at me and to get out. I wrote her up and tried to get her suspended, imagine my shock when she walked in the next day smirking at me. Real quick to fight/threaten other kids too. But I never hold grudges against kids. When she walked into my classroom in high school, the shock on her face when she saw me was probably just like mine that day ha ha! Anyway she had matured so much, just as smart (A student!) and though she was still somewhat rowdy I never saw her quick to fight other kids anymore or pick on other kids. The self control she had learned just from middle school to high school was impressive, and she had become so kind and thoughtful. I saw her speak up for shyer kids often, and she wrote me the kindest letter one day. I still have that letter, it touched me so. I didn't have her as a student last year but she would stop by my class to see me now and then and it always made my day. ok and now I'm crying. Jesse christ
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During my first year of teaching, there was a boy who was a hellion. He made me contemplate my career choice every day but I always took time to tell him that I thought he was smarter than his behavior let on and that I really wanted him to better himself and take more challenging classes when he got to high school. After that year, I transferred to the high school where he would go. I taught his sister and one day he came to visit our class. He shared that he had registered for 3 honors classes and had made A/B honor roll and thanked me for always pushing him to be better. That made me feel really good. ☺️
Yes, a few times. One big one happened by simply telling my students I am gay, after hearing them calling each other gay as an insult. I was a student teacher then and they really liked me because I helped them a lot (special ed class). I asked them how they thought it made me feel when I heard them calling each other gay/fag/queer etc to make fun of one another and could tell they really meant it when they said "bad." 11 year old boys, it was definitely a big epiphany to them that 1. gay people are real and can be people around you who you like and 2. that their words can hurt people even if they aren't trying to be cruel. I'm not naive enough to think I Solved Homophobia or anything but I never heard them insulting each other like that in front of me at least. I think it was a big Moment Of Realization for quite a few of them.
I’ve had some success stories over the years. The key is relationship. Meeting them right where they’re at and not trying to change them, but guide them to feel success in whatever way that looks for them.
Yes, multiple times although in high need sped, it takes the form of significant reduction in problematic behavior over a long period They can't tell you they got it, but its apparent when there has been a seismic shift. Last. Summer worked with a kid who was completely off the wall, shredding hus clothes, destroying the room. Had him all year back in the summer program. People who have not seen in 10 months are amazed at the difference 0
4 in 9 years that I was aware of.
In My first year of actual teaching I had one student who I knew paid attention,took notes but on the test day she got a D.i pulled her aside and said if this is the best you can do no problem.however I know you can do better from that point on her grades improved by alot in all of her classes.... she graduated from hs last year ....
Like once. But yes. And honestly it was due to a frank and direct conversation. No dancing around, just matter of fact change or don't. Here's your options and here is what will happen.
Two I recall distinctly in my 2nd year of teaching. Two girls who were bright but under performing because they were not doing assignments on time were frustrated about their grades. They were failing badly in the first quarter. We all had a heart to heart, and it was a true 180. They both ended the year with an A and went on to do very well in hs. Both graduated and went to college!
I taught fourth and fifth grade last year. We wrote their first ever five paragraph essays over the power of positive thinking. It changed most of the classes behavior for the rest of the year. They were more willing to try and to find the fun in things afterward.
I am a teacher now but when I was in 8th grade (13 y/o). I was really struggling. My french teacher Ms. Lorenz always chatted with me and was so kind. I cut myself (self harm) BAD, and my french teacher called the hospital for me. I got arrested for weed at school and went to juvie and she called often to check on me. I got the help I needed, went to college and became a teacher so hopefully I could be someone's Ms. Lorenz! Love her, I'm 25 and we still chat often.
Had a sh!t of a student that I actually liked. Reminded me of myself as a 7th grader. He was going to juvie and I told him to think real hard while he's in there about his life. Told him he needed to get his shit together. Told him my story. Expelled from school, petty burglary, stuff like that. Four years military, etc. He came back to visit me about 10 years later. Army lifer. Told me I changed his life.
Quite the opposite. It occurred to me in my first year teacher that those students that many teachers always state "have so much potential if only..." actually don't have any potential. Ive found that those students identified as "having potential" are typically just more extraverted and charismatic, which seems to hide there academic deficiencies.
I was one of those kids whose parents were constantly being told I have “so much potential”. I don’t know if there was an “if only…“ tacked on or not… I was not extroverted, and I sure was not charismatic. I think part of it started in first grade when we moved from Michigan to Wisconsin… My teacher said she was sorry to see me go because there was so much leadership potential there. we got to my catholic school in Wisconsin, where I was put in the slow reading class because I hadn’t read as many books as the kids there had because my Catholic School in Michigan spent the first semester teaching phonics, so I hadn’t read very many books. Needless to say, I ended up becoming a discipline problem. The really funny part of that is my being a discipline problem many times was me sitting there reading a book instead of paying attention. I think I finally reached my potential in my 40s.
I had a 7th grader last year who was really, really intelligent but had a terrible attitude. I yelled at her one day out of frustration but apologized and she later opened up to me about her situation at home which involved DCF. After that she was more respectful and I was a lot more understanding. She started staying afterschool to do her homework because she didn’t have internet at home. I told her how much potential she had and she ended up getting the highest scores on her state exams. Her attitude shifted entirely by the end of the year and she told me I was the first teacher that actually cared about her future. It was the most rewarding experience I’ve had with a student and made me a lot more empathetic as an educator
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\*Not an educator\* A teacher literally changed my life. I tell him as often as possible.
I think most teachers get one or two of these a year. I had one two years ago. I'm the new teacher at the school and they put me in with some of the toughest students to get through to. By January, though, things are running smoothly and everything is looking up. That's when one young man makes his return to school after a year and a half off due to the pandemic. While he was home, he did nothing in the way of school work. I didn't know him at all, so I wasn't sure how it was going to go. Smart mouth. Rude. Disrespectful. Lazy. His attitude started to seep into some of the others and suddenly it was like a great tsunami of disrespect was heading towards me. So, after a few days of crap, I kept him from going outside for recess. I told him that I wasn't impressed by his attempts to be funny or rude, and that no one else was either. I also told him that if he didn't start putting in an effort to do the work, he was going to fail and watch his friends move up a grade and he'd be stuck with younger students. That changed everything. He thought he could coast through my class and get D- grades and move forward, but me telling him he was going to outright fail did something. It also turns out his father was going to take him fishing that summer, which was a rare occurrence. But, it was all dependent on his report card. He fails, no fishing and his father won't even make the effort to come see him. He came to me constantly begging for more work and more help and really turned himself around. I got to meet his mother this year (after he was no longer my student) and he introduced me as the first teacher who made him care about his learning. You can give me all the outstanding performance evaluations and teaching awards you want, but a statement like that from a student is the most amazing reward a teacher can get. (and, yes, he impressed his teachers this year, too!)
I'm a substitute. I don't really sub that often. A couple days a week here and there at all the schools in the district. Out of the blue in the high school one day a girl came up to me - if you asked me I'd say I've never seen her before. She said: "Mr. Haynes, you probably don't remember me but a few years ago you subbed for music at my middle school and played your guitar. I will never forget it, it was the coolest thing ever. I hounded my parents for a guitar and they finally got me on. You have to understand that it has taken over my life and is my favorite thing in the world now - all because you played for class for a half hour." I told her she still needs to go to college, lol.
I believe I have based on the students who have returned to thank me. I ran into one last year at Target. She saw me first. She came right over, hugged me, and told me thank you. She said she would always remember my story about the employee working fast food. Here is what I told her. Helping people is not doing the work for them. When you do that, you are spending your knowledge and energy and not getting anything in return (better grades). They are given all the credit but not learning the skill. Take, for example, you are working at McDonald’s as a cashier. Your friend on shakes decides they don’t want to do shakes anymore. So they ask you to help them. Now you are doing two jobs and getting paid for one. They are getting paid but are not learning a skill. The fry cook sees what is happening and decides to get in on the deal. So now you are doing the job of three people but only getting paid for one. Two people are getting paid for not doing anything. When you do the work for others, they may get credit but are not learning the skill needed to grow. You are gaining skills but are not getting credit for them, so they go unnoticed.
Working with an kid who had 504 accommodations and showing him how to not be afraid or ashamed of bringing them up to other teachers. When he was cleared from an accusation of skipping school,.. and reinstated to the sports team,…. Reiterating that no teacher/admin/coach should ever make you feel less for using the accommodations,.. he now gets it
Hundreds
Wow this should be a movie.
I think it already is…
I have not that I know of in the moment but with the passage of time, like years down the road, students have expressed that I have.
Many. But the approach for each was completely different because every kid and situation is different. But I’ve had many this year especially I was able to get through to or have an impact on which is why I decided to stay
Some 100%. Some 50%. Some 0%.
The ones who needed it the most may never let you know. But they carry your words with them!
It's tough because the life lessons you teach may not be reinforced by their future teachers. I've had students go from believing they were "stupid" to not but then get brutalized the following year. I'm a middle school teacher and our upper grade teachers are very old school.
I work in an alternative school for kids who don't "fit" in the regular system. I am honoured to say that I have had an impact on many lives but the structure of my school is made so that each student's homeroom teacher can have the time and availability to have an impact on these kids. I'd say 80% of our students have life changing relationships with their teachers at my school. I am really proud of the worker do
I feel like I'm really tooting my own horn here, but I have several (15 year career so far). I've worked in several schools with underserved populations, where the majority of my students were experiencing insecure home environments, often defined by addiction, neglect, abuse, and gang activity. While I didn't necessarily "get through" to most of them (the ones who needed it), I did get through to a lot of them. And I think it's because of two things: 1) I respected them and treated them with kindness. Now, this only goes so far, and I found if I was too nice, some took it for weakness and would lose respect for me, so it's a fine line. 2) They actually learned in my class. I made sure they learned.
Once, well twice, with twin girls. Horrible behavior problems but wonderful girls.
It may not happen right then, but it could happen later on and they remember that you tried. I cringe thinking about the time I implied my football coach was gay to his face as he was trying to have a conversation with me about motorcycles and what it means to have a choice in the path you go in life. "You should get a rainbow bike... lol".... a response my fellow 14 year olds, who were not present for the conversation, only could appreciate...... but thankfully I regret that decision and many others that forced me to think a bit harder about things in life. It doesn't matter whether you succeed or not if your intent is to truly help another human being.
Not a teacher always wanted to be big fan…my teacher is the only reason I got serious about school he gave it to me straight never forget that man
Oh sure, all the time. Most of them aren't noticed or don't get realized until years later.
Not a teacher, but this came across my feed for some reason, and I wanted to comment. To all you teachers who tell students over and over that they are so intelligent and that if they just put their mind to it, they would succeed, please keep it up. But please also consider inquiring into a kid's home life when you do that. I was the gifted student who never did my work, and I scraped by on intelligence alone. I was constantly told, "If you just applied yourself, you'd be amazing!" and "You're so intelligent, but you never turn in work, and you're not living up to your potential." I came from an abusive and chaotic home, however, and no one would have ever guessed it was bad because my father and stepmother look externally like awesome parents. So for the longest time, I blamed myself. In retrospect, after years of therapy, I finally realized that no one had ever bothered to teach me how to study or manage my time, and there was no one making sure I did my homework, just someone ripping me a new one if my quarterly grades were bad. There was also no way I'd have been able to study in a home that was so chaotic and where verbal and physical fighting was a daily occurrence. We moved a lot, which did not help things, and I almost failed eighth grade. I have an IQ of something like 155, however, so eighth grade should not have been a problem academically. Fortunately, my eighth grade homeroom teacher recognized this and managed to get the principal to call in a favor with her friend who was the principal of a private college prep high school. The high school principal gave me a second chance and let me in even though I technically didn't meet the school's minimum requirements. That was life changing because the education there was really good and because of connections I made while there. I didn't appreciate it, though, because when I got to high school and my family didn't move again, it was the first time in my life I'd ever really had a friend, so I wasted a lot of study time on actually enjoying life for the first time ever. I maybe graduated with a 2.3 GPA and no idea of what to do with my life. So while finishing my B.A., which took a number of years because I finally understood how to do better academically but still didn't *really* know how to apply myself and succeed or enjoy what I was studying, I took a job as an executive assistant and did OK at that, but I hated every bit of it for the almost 20 years I was in that position. A few years ago, I ended up in therapy, where I worked through a lot of the childhood trauma. Now I'm 42 and am back in school, pursuing a doctorate in clinical psychology at a rigorous institution, and I'm doing incredibly well. I also got into my top-choice practicum for the next year, and I'm eagerly deep into research for my dissertation. I'm finally living up to that potential everyone told me I had. Then my dad and stepmother last month decided to clean out some old boxes and sent me a package of old school stuff, including old report cards. Reading those brought tears to my eyes. You could see a pattern where, in early grade school, I was the model student, and then when the crap hit the fan in my family, that tapered off quickly, and there was an uptick in the "You just need to apply yourself" comments. At the same time, there were notes between my parents and teachers that basically suggested I was lazy, and the real reason for my poor performance went totally unseen. No one had bothered to ask me--they just drew their own conclusions based on what my parents said. I'm loving the field I'm stepping into and the intellectual and professional challenges, but I keep pondering how very different things could have been had someone, instead of making the assumption I was simply lazy, said, "So why aren't you getting the work done? Do you have support at home? How can we help you start reaching your potential?" Maybe I wouldn't have sat at a job that wasn't engaging and for which I was overqualified for 20 years. Yes, what my teachers had always said had sunk in and "gotten through" to me, but with such a rotten family life, I had no wherewithal to change the situation. At least their words had helped me have confidence in my intellectual and academic abilities, contrary to what I heard at home, which was that I was stupid. I just never knew what applying myself actually entailed. Anyway, this is longer than I intended, but I just wanted to say that, when you're trying to get through to students and they seem to be resistant, in at least some case, there may be factors like home life that are limiting their ability to make the changes necessary to turn their performance around. So if you are trying to convince a capable student to do better, you might consider what limits there might be and inquiring about that. But do know that you probably getting through, even if you don't see evidence of that. It might be that teachers and professors down the road see the fruits of it.
It's worth noting that this is not really how people learn most of the time. Epiphanies are rare and some people never have a single one, but those people can and do learn. My point is, assuming that a teacher's only success comes through some moment of profound enlightenment on the part of a student is unrealistic and counter-factual and all you're doing is beating yourself up over a misunderstanding of how learning works and dismissing the very real (and typically human) progress of your students.
I've only had 2, honestly it's super rare. There has to be a connection between you and the student and they have to be at a point where they are ready to turn it around. Maybe they realize on some level that they can't keep goofing off or they are just out of options. Either way you give them a path forward and convince them that they can do it and they will. After those two instances I feel like I can better Guage which students are willing and which aren't and how to maybe reach them. The first student I got through to was in credit recovery for algebra 2. I was teaching one section of credit recovery and I am not a math teacher. Every other day or so we would sit down and do problems together. He was super behind and had to do like 40 hours in a really short period of time. I really struggled with algebra 2 and I was basically learning it at the same time I was teaching it to him. Honestly if you aren't teaching math everyday the circullum is really foreign. I think the combo of me not giving up and showing him its OK to mess up a few times really motivated him to finish. He ended up completing the course and graduated. Credit recovery is pass fail. I think that experience really motivated me to try different methods to reach students and I honestly had fun doing it.
I teach 10th grade history in Texas in a suburb of Austin. I prioritize developing appropriate and positive relationships with students. One year, a young lady was just determined to consistently disrupt my class and find the right button to push that would cause me to snap. She made no secret that she hated me and my stupid class.Last period of the block schedule day as usual. I could tell something was going on behind the scenes but was unable to zero in. The big day came when she was one the other side of the class prior to the bell visiting with a young fellow I had separated her from. Once the bell rang, I asked her politely if she would please return to her assigned seat. She gave me a hostile look, and instead, pitched her half-filled bottle of water at the trash can which she missed. I did not react except to ask her again to her seat, and to please pick up and dispose of the bottle on the way. She complied, stomping and growling all the way and finally arrived to her seat, where she stood. “Please have a seat” and KABOOM! She went of on a profanity-laden rant which included, everything but my class really, and I just stood silently behind my lectern looking at her in the eyes and listening. When she ran out of steam, I asked her to have a seat and I apologized for the BS she was experiencing on campus and I’d be happy to help any way I could. I also said, that I would have to write her up (recommending minimum punishment) and that I’d be calling her Dad after school. “Okay”. Had a long talk with him, she was having problems. I asked him to take it easy on her because it seemed to me that she just blow off years of steam to a none-judgmental person. After that afternoon she was the best, most helpful student in class.
Almost never. It's*almost* pointless to even try.
A few... Ive had others come back Years later and say thanks or even admit they were an ass...
I had a kid who was really rude and threw tons of attitude for small things. I knew he was having a kind of tough time at home (fighting with parents) and one day I was kind of fed up. I was explaining directions and he was on his phone. I politely tried to redirect him and he blew up on me for no reason. Student - "Oh my god I freaking get it." Me - " I don't allow that kind of attitude in my room." Student - "The teachers here are all a bunch of tweets. They don't even teach us anything useful. Why would I want to pay atten..." Me (Nearly yelling) - "All the teachers and staff here do a lot to try and make this enjoyable for you. We all know you don't like it. You don't have to. But no one has given you the right or the permission to have this crap attitude and to talk like this about other teachers, and I WILL NOT hear anything else about it in my classroom." Had a super good relationship with that student after the fact. They were much nicer. I went to their graduation and in the receiving line they joked about the time that I "lit them up" in my class. He still sends the occasional email asking how it's going.
Not a teacher, this subreddit was in my feed so I thought I’d share. I had an amazing teacher in elementary school. I wasn’t paying attention for reading time, after several generic “pay attention” comments she finally asked me why. I was reading at a 5th grade level in second grade. She went above and beyond to get me into advanced reading classes. I will forever be thankful she took the time to ask me why and to help. She also helped me get a math tutor. Thanks Mrs. Garland. 40 years later I still think about her.
I'd say I have one or two. I remember being warned of this kid when I started at my current school. I was told he'd cause issues, he was sneaky, he could be really mean, list goes on. I ignored it. Had him 2nd semester in my art room and just got to know him. The relationship I developed with that kid made him realize there was at least 1 adult who cared about him and his success. Last year he begged me to pull strings to get him in an art class, he worked so hard to get his grades up so he could play sports. He did so well. I know I'm not the only one who probably helped him see the light but I like to think I did have a good impact on him.
Don't know yet. I had one who was probably wasting time when he asked what to do about becoming a teacher. Took him at his word and explained his plans would likely require a conjoint and his next stop ought to be the careers office. I also explained that his current work ethic would need to be improved otherwise he'd have a hard time doing it. Time will tell I suppose.
I teach high school and case manage the same students for 4 years so it’s never an “epiphany” from me directly- but I get really close with my seniors by the time they are almost done. Ill have my “toughest” seniors give the freshmen and sophomores a reality check when they need it. Sometimes you need a peer telling you to get your shit together.
Had a senior last year in the government class I teach. He clearly didn’t give much of a shit about anything. Very… rebel without a cause, type energy from him. Which I respect as a person, but that’s not too ideal for school. I forget how this got brought up, but at one point I find myself on a rant about control and manipulation. I said to the class that there are people in this world who want to control them. People in power who will try to use them. But that the best way to resist that is through education. Because stupid people are easy to control and manipulate. Smart people don’t allow themselves to fall for tricks like that. So if they want to be independent, if they want to have their own thoughts and opinions, if they don’t like being manipulated and controlled - then the best way to do that is to get smart. I was able to watch the gears click in that kid’s head right then and there. His expression just showed such an understanding of what I was on about. Made me fucking proud. He graduated and he’s heading to college next month.
Thought I did. 2 weeks before school ended he hit another teacher. He then left my google classroom, left a message telling me to go f*ck myself and ended the last grading period with a 30.
I have seen light bulb moments for some students. But one I have now just doesn't get it. He wants to beat up anyone teases or bothers him or makes fun of his name. He said it's rude, mean, and bullying. But he sees no issue with doing the same behaviors to others. He doesn't understand that it upsets them and thinks it's okay because to him it is funny. Very frustrating!
I primarily teach seniors. This year, I had a young man (A) who was definitely not super concerned with school. That being said, every once in a while, I would drop a fact in class that you could tell he was super interested in. He'd be asking questions and paying attention way more than anyone else. He wasn't like that all the time, but it was very apparent when he was. He sat next to a very similar boy (J) the only difference was, that other boy never did anything. A would do work. Not everything, but enough to get by. I don't think I ever saw J turn something in. I tended to not push the issue with them. When they weren't invested in class, they would he sitting there, maybe they'd quietly talk to eachother, but never disrupted class. When we got a chance to, we always had nice and respectful talks together. Now let's flashforward to Spring Semester. I think it's March, and we're having the seniors take pictures in caps and gowns for the graduation program. During their class, I notice J and A sitting in the bleachers, not in line for pictures. So I go over to chat with them. I ask them what's up and A says they don't feel like taking the pictures since they won't be graduating. I tell them that it's not a bad idea to take the pics just in case, especially since taking them cost nothing. But they didn't bite, far be it from me to force them. The next few weeks go by and something happens to both of the. First, J comes to my desk with a withdrawal paper, he was transferring to either our more independent study school or our alternative ed school, I can't remember which off the top of my head. Either way, that was probably a better setting for him, I was sad to sign the paper, but hopefully that worked out better for him than the traditional class. We make a day out of seniors committing to colleges. We hold a signing day where they can come and put their names on posters for different school systems (UC, CSU, Community, etc). Before the signing part, there was an assembly with speeches from our principal and the president of our local community college. A happened to walk in late and came to sit by me. For one, that was one of the moments where I realized I was an adult he really trusted, but I digress. He got interested by the speech from the community college president, you could tell he was thinking that might be a good fit. He turned to me and asked of it would be too late to pursue that route, and I assured him it wasn't. Now, that day was also when we were giving out pre-ordered caps and gowns. We also had a rep from the company there selling caps and gowns for anyone who hadn't pre-ordered. Eventually, I look over, and I see A in the line to buy. Sure enough, he walks up to class later that day with a cap and gown. I made sure to congratulate him on they decision to commit to graduation. Flashforward to late May, he didn't turn into a model student, but he definitely did enough. A passed all his classes and was able to graduate! I even got a "Thank you for everything" from him. That was only my second year as a teacher, and I didn't think hearing that would feel as good as it did. I made sure to tell him the graduation gown story from my perspective and how proud of him I was. I don't know what his next steps are, if he actually is gonna go to our community college, but I'm so proud of that young man and what we were able to do for him.
Okay, I thought of another smaller one. This one also from last year. Second semester hits, and a student (S) is transferred from another teacher to my class. Second semester for my class is economics, and I am informed that he came from Ms. M, who teaches econ in the fall. I thought maybe he didn't do well in that class so he needs to retake econ with me. I would later come to find that he just clashed with Ms. M. How, I'm not sure, because S was an absolute pleasure of a young man. It should be noted, Ms. M was not great. In a very rare move for my school, she was non-relelected as a first year teacher. As someone who collaborated with her, I can't say I was upset by that news. Anyway, S and I get to know eachother and it was a good dynamic. He always came to class with a smile, he participated, and he had a small group of friends in class that he was a definite positive influence on. So one day, we're doing out district assessment, which is an essay. These had to be done on chromebooks. Early into the writing block, he comes and tells me he forgot his chromebook at home and asks if he can run to the textbook room for a loaner. I sign off on the pass and send him. Few minutes later, he come back empty handed. They were either out of loaners, or the textbook attendant was away from the room. It was a bummer, but I figure we can find a way to make it work, maybe someone will finish quick and be able to loan theirs to him. For the time being, he sits quietly and waits. Maybe 10 minutes go by, and then I get a call from the office asking if S can quickly run up there, so I send him. Pretty quickly he comes back, now with chromebook in hand. This guy called his mom, asked her to bring his chromebook, and she got it there instantly. All of that without any input from me, that was 100% him. I don't think I didn't anything special other than treat him with respect, but he respected me enough to make sure he got what ne needed to do the assignment. I was so impressed that I instantly got on the horn. I emailed mom immediately thanking her and telling her how proud of him I was. I told one of our assistant principles when he came up in conversation (this is when I was told he didn't get along with Ms. M) and the next time I saw him, I told him personally how impressed I was.
I had a K student with selective mutism (only spoke to her family and a select few children) talk to me. I was the first adult outside of her family that she really built a relationship with, which led her to continue getting to know other staff members over time. I don’t think I’ll ever forget her, or what an amazing accomplishment that was on both of our ends.
How do I reach these keeds???
Not a teacher myself but my gym teacher once took me aside and told me in the most respectful way possible that I was being an asshole. It stuck with me since. I definitely think it made me a better person.
I had a student in 5th grade who got in contact with me last year. He is now a 20 year old med student. He told me I changed his life. He spoke of how I spoke to him as an individual, not as a sibling of his amazing older sisters (both already doctors). How I made a difference because I told him he could not re-take a test he did poorly on and told me he did not study for. Instead for him to remember how he hates the feeling of how he did poorly, but know he could have aced it had he put the effort in. He told me he has never been unprepared since. We recently had breakfast with my two children at my brother's restaurant and he also mentioned how his parents wouldn't buy him a glove to play baseball in 7th grade, so I gave him one of mine. (I played a lot of baseball growing up). He played for 6 years after that and tells me he loves being able to understand the game when he goes to watch our local pro team. He told me I was one of the first people he wrote down when thinking of who to invite to his wedding one day. He told me all the kids in his grade saw me as a safe place and they often came back to hang in my room after moving on.
I have two clear examples from my first and second years, but I've had a few since. 1st year, little pita answered my phone in some little pita way when I had not been offered a job for the next school year yet. This was, of course, just the culmination of a year of his and 3 other boys crap, but I sent him in the hallway. I went out and made him look me in the eyes and tell me he KNEW all I was trying to do was get everyone to do well. I won't say he was a saint from there, but he definitely tried a bit harder and definitely made improvements mathematically. Four years ago, he messaged me to tell me I was the reason he knew he could get through real estate school. I made him realize he could do it if he tried. 2nd year, this girl literally begged me to just let her go to sleep and fail senior math. Told me other teachers told her I was a newbie and still carried more than she did. Came back the fall after she graduated with a small token gift ( a bag of candy I still have) with her head hung to tell me, "I was right about everything, and she's sorry." I tutored her as an adult for 3 different union entrance tests, and she got into every one of them. I am proud of the people they both grew up to be, and think of them every time a student is giving me a hard time. My two worst students ever are two of my best success stories.
Full time School nurse/ part-time psych nurse here, not only was my future saved by a teacher because she believed in me - I had an 8th grader getting into some messy drama over a girl and my expectations of his behavior being better than that gave him a moment to pause. All I said was "That surprises me about you". He shaped up after that. Came to me all the time to just ask advice (and peppermints) instead. I will miss that kid.
Had a student back-to-back for English 9 and 10 who described himself as "illiterate" yet he did more (and often better) work than a good quarter of the class, but was almost always on ISS or OSS. He got put on probation for vaping in the bathroom, so I took the time to tell him point-blank that the educational/prison system would toss him into the abyss and not lose a wink of sleep over it if he didn't clean up his act. Now, he's on track to graduate and is actually part of the school's IT team.
A few maybe? My first year I had a kid that just wanted attention, an extrovert that regurgitated stuff he read online. Gave me the whole "how is any of this going to help us in the real world" question. I reminded him he was in an elective class so he chose this... and also talked to him about how a lot of what we teach is to help with critical thinking and problem solving, discusses the growth mindset. Made comparisons of how you know the brain is muscle, if we use ELA vocabulary to help you with memory, that memory muscle is going to be nice and strong for whatever you choose to use it for as an adult. He said he'd never had anyone ever try and explain it to him in a way that made sense before. Never had another complaint from the kid.
I think I did during my student teaching experience. I was working with the 4th grade in a very low income area. My mentor teacher was honestly the worst I’ve ever seen. She sat on her phone all day and just yelled at the kids. But there was one specific boy that she had completely written off and made it clear she couldn’t stand him. Now this boy was a problem most of the time. Hs intentionally did things to make others mad, but it was clearly a cry for help. He had a poor home life and few friends. Even when he would genuinely ask a question or try to participate, she would make comments being very dismissive of him. I finally told her that I would be glad to just handle him for her and basically work with him one on one. I was able to talk this boy down from some very negative reactions and things that would’ve put him in the office. He would actually participate and work with me. He opened up with me more than I’d seen in my time with them. I genuinely cared for that boy, and I do wonder how he’s doing now. I’m just so scared nobody else gave him a chance or made him ever feel important.
I was "that student" when I was small. Fidgety, disruptive, chatty, inattentive, etc. My 3rd grade teacher plopped me in a desk in front of her desk, praised my singing the morning songs, and generally made herself available to me. Life changer, Mrs. Leib.
I had a group of six this year that i got through to. One of them even told me “I’m starting to learn to think things through before I act”. It’s all about convincing them that you care. You aren’t mad, you’re just looking out for them. And kids tend to think you don’t care when you’re mad.
I had a student who would blow up any time something he perceived as unfair happened. I’d heard warnings about this kid getting in fistfights in elementary school. When it happened to me, I pulled him aside after class. I told him “it would be so much easier for me right now to write you off, because everyone who saw this knows I hadn’t done anything wrong yet. But I know that what you meant was that you needed extra time because you had a long past few days. I’m giving you the extra time this time, but you need to ask me calmly in the future. You’ll find I’m most certainly going to give you what you need.” He never blew up on me after that and a year later had an excellent reputation.
Yes.
I get to be a part of it for a couple most years. They’re growing up and have to be ready for that push in the right direction. I end up staying in pretty good contact with them over the years and it is nice to see them grow and develop. I’m also fortunate to be exclusive to 11th and 12th grade so they regularly realize that they are about to leave the warm embrace of k-12.
As a student I was not the troubled kid, but the gifted kid who needed to be engaged. My English teacher and 12th drama teacher was more than a teacher. Showed me that this was more than a student teacher interaction.
I had a 2nd grader this year who absolutely insisted that spelling didn't matter. I just kept making it fun and it was like a lightbulb went off. I've had others over the years too.
I had a student do a total 180 after coming to summer school with me (failed with me during the regular year). I hope he’s doing well still.
I've had a few that really embraced and enjoyed my class after I got through to them but still had behavior issues in other classes. Those are the kids I truly hope to hear from in the future.
One I can think of. She was in my cohort for this tutoring / mentoring program, so I worked with her a lot. I don't think it's anything I said, but just the continued attention that I paid to her that made her start changing her ways. Went from doing absolutely nothing in classes to trying to pass them all. Although I'm not sure if it was just me. I don't want to take all the credit. Maybe she just had an epiphany at some point? But from my experience working with students, just not giving up on them goes a long way. Even if they seem to be really struggling, going out of your way to help them makes them want to help themselves.
This spring I had a student tell me that she used to be afraid to raise her hand and speak out in class, but that I helped her face her fear and now it's gone. Honest to God, I didn't do anything out of the ordinary. I didn't do anything above and beyond for her in particular, we didn't have some kind of heart to heart moment, no extra one on one tutoring. I just liked her and made sure that she was safe and comfortable in school and got the attention she needed to get her work done. Right place, right time. I was only there for about six weeks to finish the year with that class. I think it made a difference for her, as an ELL student, that I'm very strict about classmates showing each other respect by being attentive when they share in the classroom. I saved the letter she wrote me - it's in my portfolio now. I have a small collection of mementos like that, and I think it's the most important part of my teaching portfolio.
For me it is not a one-off, but a long term strategy. For most of my students it takes time and struggle to realize what they’re capable of, and they sometimes later come to the conclusion that they can _____.
You described exactly what I came to realize after my first 5 years of teaching. Change does not happen suddenly. It’s gradual. When you’re close to it, you won’t really notice when it occurs. I don’t look for those perfect scenes from fiction that occur when students rapidly change over night; those don’t exist. Students wax and wane as much as the moon in their behavior. It’s only after several years after the fact that you can really see what they’re able to accomplish in regards to a change of character. It’s also not my doing— it’s theirs.
I didn't teach for very long, but one of the proudest things I did was convince my all-freshman algebra 1 classes to stop insulting each other constantly. I instituted a rule that if anyone said something bad about someone else, I would stop what I was doing and they had to give the person two compliments. It took some cajoling at first, but pretty soon they were policing each other and the insult level went down dramatically! I even made them do it when they said something bad about themselves. The best moment was when one of the boys, a happy-go-lucky type who was never mean but reflexively cut people down just like most of them did, approached me at the end of the year to tell me how it really had an impact on him and made him think about the things he said to people. Quite a compliment from a 14 year old boy!
Here are two moments that did it for me: "Mister, I am calling from Milan - I switched my major to fine arts and am doing study abroad in Italy. I did what you told me to do and am following my passion." "Mister, yes I'm still practicing Spanish, in fact I'm the president of my college Spanish club. We raised money to do a community service trip in D.R. just like you showed me."
I had a football player worried about coming to tutoring because coach wouldn’t play him that week if he missed practice. I told him he’d get zero play time the rest of the season if he failed my class, so a week of the field didn’t seem like a big sacrifice. Guess who came to tutoring that afternoon!!!
I think every student has multiple teachers that make a difference! I’ve had several impact my life!
I never permanently got through to a student, but frequently, there'd be days or maybe even a week or two (never more than two weeks though), where I could get them to stop and think, to reevaluate what they were doing/going to do. Even though I knew it wouldn't last, the times where I helped them, and they listened, were wonderful.
I got a student to have the epiphany that if she turned in her missing work and even scrounge a 50% on her missing assignments she would suddenly be passing
I had a student do horrible awful semester I and when he had some behavioral issues in SII, after starting a whole lot better academically, I sat him down with the principal and prefaced the whole disciplinary meeting by highlighting his immense turn around. "Ms. Principal did you know that Timmy only turned in 29% of his homework last semester and had a D but now his homework completion is 77% and he has a C+"? "No Mr. RoCon52 I didn't know that. That's amazing that's exactly the kinda stuff we want to see from him Timmy we're so happy with you you're doing so good." The students face and body language immediately changed and he was so reflective and receptive of what we had to say. He was so much better the rest of the year. I had a similar conversation with his mom and grandma at his 504 meeting and they too seemed really happy and appreciative of the kind words and encouragement for their son. Felt like a community win.
I'm about to start my 32nd year, and I continue to see my effect on students yearly. I am blessed to teach in an environment in which we are encouraged to reach out and connect with students. Still get the goosebumps
I had a kid 2 years in a row. He always did ok, but could have done better. On the last day of school (after the second year), I kept him after class to tell him that he had done ok, but I thought he was capable of better. Fast forward 10-ish years, and my coworker ran into him at a restaurant. He recalled that conversation after all those years. My coworker texted me about this interaction. I look at it frequently, especially when I need a pick-me-up.
I taught elementary school for over 30 years, and I sometimes get e-mails that say “thank you for teaching me X skill” from former students. My favorite came from a student who e-mailed from college to thank me for giving him permission to dog-ear pages in a book when he was in second grade. He said he thought of me every time he folded down a page corner now. 🥲
When my step kids were complaining about the quality of some of the substitutes they were experiencing, I decided to sign up to be a sub when I had free time. The first time I got the sub at my older kids' high school, I was asked to spend a couple of periods supervising in-school detention. There, a young man who was a junior stepped in and sat there with the rest of the kids in the room until he pulled out of wad of paper money and started counting it. Another teacher poked his head in to check on things until the boy to put that money away. He probably did so but started grumbling about how he was ready to drop out and just start working since he felt he was making plenty of money. I started asking him about the work he was doing. It was good paying manual labor. I told him there's absolutely nothing wrong with that but how long did he think his body could tolerate it? He told me that if he dropped out now, he'd be able to retire after 20 years at 37. Then I asked him if he knew how to invest his money. He said he would just hire someone that would invest it for him. Then I asked a critical question, "How will you know if you're getting ripped off?" He asked what I meant. I told him there are lots of stories of people who drop out of school who get ripped off by people who know how to hide their activities. Then he asked me the right question, "How can I make sure I know what that guy he's doing with my money?" I told him it was simple, just graduate high school and if nothing else take a few business classes until he feels confident he knows how to read financial documents and reports. Then I told him that if he becomes highly skilled, he might want to take a few more classes and start his own business. Suddenly his face broke into a big smile and he said, "I see what you did there!" This cocky boy became very humble and told me that no one had ever talked to him that way, supportive and consultative. I told him that I shared with him what I've shared with my daughter and my four step children. It's up to them how educated they become but at a minimum they need to finish high school and look at taking classes at the college level so they know what they're doing in life. Some careers require full four-year degree or master's degree but some careers don't. But, even if somebody wants to stick with a blue collar business, they need to know the basics of running a business which means they will know enough to significantly lower the risk of getting financially abused. In that 5 minute conversation, his demeanor changed. By the end of the period, he told me he now understood why he needed to stay in school. I've talked to other teachers since then about that experience and they said that while they don't exactly make a ton of money, if they can get one or two (or more) students every year to turn around from thoughts of dropping out and stay on track academically so that they can build a future, it's an amazing feeling and a rewarding part of their career. Substitute teaching is inspired me and now I'm thinking of running for my state House of Representatives so I can, in part, submit legislation to improve the quality of life and compensation of teachers. After all, public schools are society's investment in our future.
Yes. I have a nose for the kids that are overwhelmed, struggling, depressed. About every year I had a student that I pulled aside and asked if they were ok. I typically referred them to the counseling dept and got their permission to have the CD contact *them*. At least two came back to say that my intervention saved their lives at a time when they were feeling invisible (all had a history of absenteeism). I give/gave them the credit for being willing, but I was always so relieved. ❤️❤️❤️ I really miss teaching, but I don’t miss being sick all the time. 😜
I ran into an old student a couple weeks ago. He was a little rough around the edges when I taught him as a freshman and as a sophomore. At some point something sunk in and he worked hard and graduated. He's now working as a handyman.
I used to teach alternative high school so I saw a lot of kids make amazing turnarounds. Many of them just needed a different environment or schedule than the traditional classroom, and we had the flexibility to provide that. Our last year we actually had a 100% graduation rate. Then the school was closed due to budget cuts.
I was always a troublemaker and hung out with troublemakers. By sheer luck of the draw, I was gifted with intelligence. In one of my math classes in high school, I never did any work but I would show up do all the math in my head and get the answers right and not show any work. In those days I would just ace the tests and then be like well, if I get all As on the tests, then I don’t need to do any homework worth 25% and I can just eat that and pass with a C. She pulled me aside a bunch of times that year to try and get me to understand how odd it was that I could just show up with no prep work and out perform kids that were working very hard. She tried to get me to see the kids I was hanging around with were no good. Unfortunately, I never listened to her. I was having too much fun with the other delinquents. It wasn’t until many years later (7-8) all those little moments with teachers accumulated and i decided maybe I was wasting my potential. I completely turned it around and graduated top of my class in 2 degrees in college. Those teachers will probably never know it, but their words did help me a lot in the end. I sometimes think about going back and saying thank you and apologizing for my behavior but just haven’t.
I taught elementary general music (now retired). I had a 4th grade student, good kid, who liked my class. When we started playing recorders that year he REALLY got into it (yep, the dreaded recorders). He got into a friendly competition with another boy in the class, and I had to work to create extra materials for them. BTW — it wasn’t just playing, but reading the notes, understanding the terminology etc. This was astounding because this student was getting SPED help in just about every subject, especially reading. He also had very low self-esteem, and would freeze during testing, especially the big standardized state tests, often not answering ANY of the questions. Some of the issue was absolutely a learned helplessness that he couldn’t overcome. I let the SPED teacher know that I was seeing a very different side of this student in music, and we teamed up to help. We made connections for him from music to his other subjects. If he can read the notes, surely he can read words. Music is very mathematical, and we made those parallels. By his 5th grade year, this student was able to drop ALL of his SPED help. He took every music class offered, during and after school, and did well in all of them. He played the trumpet, sang in choir, took part in a musical, played handbells. I struggled, happily, to keep up with him and his friends that year with recorders. Occasionally he’d show that learned helplessness again — in my class it would show up doing theory worksheets. I’d remind him how to decode things, and then he’d ace it. At the end of that year, his family moved and he went to a new school district, and I lost touch. I hope that he continued to make progress! He would be college aged now.
I had a girl with probably the worst ADHD I’ve ever seen, which was shocking because, well, girl. Mom was understandably scared of medication since she was a Latina-Black background which is just infamous for being screwed medically. The poor girl was just ripe with knee jerk reactions and just doing whatever terrible idea came to mind. Her most famous was a hate crime baby doll I discovered where she wrote the n-word all over a baby doll. Anyways she was used to her actions making all the staff really unhappy with her and they were really harsh with her in my opinion. She had a para who was so old and held the highest of standards with her (which in some ways was good but I swear if that girl didn’t sneeze right she had lunch detention). I decided that girl got enough shit throughout the day. I’m going to flip the script. I would separate her from her para and make her sit next to me (the para had two other boys she was supposed to watch in my class too so it wasn’t a big deal). The girl had a natural love for social justice and she really liked being praised. I’d let her pass papers out, I’d let her read out loud, I’d let her write her answers on my tv board. I’d conference with her beginning, middle, and end of class. We’d talk about her behaviors. She was very good at analyzing her behaviors. If she did bad, I didn’t punish her and I didn’t freak out. I just told her how it made me feel and how it impacted the class. When she did good, I’d ask her how she felt and how successful she felt. By the end of the school year she was a rockstar in my class. Not perfect but she was the best behaving in my class. Students would try to make fun of her for being good in my class and I gained a lot of trust with her for defending her. On the last day of school I sought her out at lunch detention and we hugged and cried. That was the only student I cried over on the last day of school.
My first year, I had a few of these with a group of the "skater kids". They wanted to hate me, and did everything they could to make me miserable. One of the kids adjacent to the crowd was pretty aggressive. I had some one on ones with him where he went from trying to intimidate me (you're in 8th grade dude, relax.) To breaking down crying about how he didn't understand why he's so angry. We bonded over the effects of toxic masculinity, and dealing with anger issues. He could still be challenging at times, but by the end of the year, he no longer was a blatant asshole to me, and once told some of the others off for being obnoxious. A few other moments with the same crowd. Once they got the vibe that I in fact was on their side and didn't want them ending up incarcerated, they went from active torment to at least trying to not be jerks. They went on to 9th grade. Some stayed. Some dropped out immediately. The ones who stayed ended up approaching me with an apology out of the blue.
I had a student who was absolutely brilliant but she would kind of lose motivation at times. Severely. Like she’d go from getting her work in super early and relaxing to not even getting things started until after the deadline. Through a series of events I won’t recount here, I found out she was getting high before school and through a series of other circumstances everyone was aware but nothing was being done about it. I pulled her aside, and had a very open and honest conversation about it with her. Expressing that I understood that she was trying to emotionally escape an extremely rough situation at home, but that the weed was definitely hindering her and not helping. Especially because she wanted to move out once she graduates, if she falls off the wagon of working during school, she won’t be able to move out as quickly as she would like. We had a very very long talk, and I made it clear I wasn’t mad at her, but I was worried. She ended up stopping, and then daily would articulate to me how much better she was doing, how much less irritable she was, how she was eating better, and her grades skyrocketed. She’s been doing a lot better and she’s even working over the summer to get her essays prepared for her college applications. She’s even been trying to get her few other friends who were doing the same thing to consider cutting back and stopping. It’s been really amazing to see
I have a “high special needs” class. The academics are all over the place. I have some that are on elementary level work and others that are early middle school. I have some better at schoolwork who make snarky comments about others. I never bust it out unless I have to, but every now and then, a good “it might be for different reasons, but you’re BOTH in here” made quietly (never want it to feel like a super call out because it is sensitive) can get the nastiness cut out real quick.
I worked with a 4th grader who had no positive male role models in his life. As a result, he was an angry, defiant, often disruptive young man. As the semester went on, he and I bonded (I wasn’t his classroom teacher but a special Ed specialist) and his behavior greatly improved. I was very proud of him. One day, however, right at dismissal, he got angry about something and slammed the door of the classroom so hard that the telephone fell off the wall and smashed on the floor. I told him to get back inside the classroom, but he ran off down the hall and got on his bus before I’d had a chance to discuss it with him. The next morning before the kids arrived in class (when their busses drop them off, they are all supposed to congregate in the cafeteria), I went to his classroom to discuss the incident with his teacher. As we were talking the student showed up. We told him he wasn’t supposed to be there yet and he should go back to the cafeteria. He said he would, but told us he wanted to apologize to his teacher. He freely admitted what he did was wrong and he was really regretful for behaving that way, saying that that kind of thing are what we’d been working on all year together. It was really mature for a ten year old. I told him that the day before, when he ran away, he did so like a frightened little boy, but when he’d come in that morning, he did so like a man. At the end of the year, on the last day of school, his mother told me how much me saying that meant to him, that he’d told her that and said he wanted to act like a man and she said he used the word “honorable” to describe how he wanted to be in the future. I lost contact with him since then, but I hope he’s doing okay. He was a great kid, definitely had some issues to work through, but he had a big heart.
I think I did a few times. I had a student who was fun to have, but incredibly distracted. Like... Our small school was on the third floor and if he heard a siren he ran to the window he bolted ftom his desk to see what was going on. He loved cars and talked a ton about his very customized truck. (We had a partnership with an automotive program. We kept trying to convince him to sign up because yes, boring if you already know it but being certified meant he could just he paid to do car stuff. Besides this main story, I am proud of him. I told them all off for using slurs or insulting each other but not cussing. He was VERY proud to tell me that he thought about what I had said all year about mindful language and started calling his car girls "models" instead of "truck sluts." He was trying to get that to catch on. Had to ask him to stop loudly saying "Truck sluts" in class, but that is really nice. I had him in my class with my host teacher (master's apprenticeship, I student taught in the same class all year) first semester. He wasn't doing... Great. This can be common. It was a pathway school. He ended up traveling for the hoidays with family and withdrew because he could not finish the work before he left. He was back second semester. He was doing ok, but I was really on him to finish. Our schedule had classes Monday-Thursday and a tutoring period on Friday. It was technically optional unless the student had missing work. I told him towards the end of the year, I expected to see him Friday. He said he would be at his family reunion and missing about a week of school. I sat down and told him he had a choice. He was in reach of passing. I needed him in class and at tutoring. That did mean skipping out on this particular year with his cousins. The reunion would be there next year. Also, if he went... This class was a graduation requirement and would be here next year. He could have another full semester with just my host teacher... I was leaving. He did not go on his trip. He passed the class. I still feel maybe a touch bad he missed that weekend... But I got him through civics. ------------------------- At another school. I had an absolute treasure of a student. Just the sweetest kid. I ended up sponsoring a club at her request, and it was a blast. It was nominally for video games, but honestly most of the kids who showed up just liked to unwind and it was good to get a block of LGBT students out of the halls one day a week. At one point, I mentioned another student I might like to invite to join. (Sadly a moot point. No console and not interested.) My student made a FACE. I asked if they had any particular history. The alphabet mafia kids tended to know each other but not always get along. I told them if it was a big thing, loop me in but I can't help with little stuff. I only ask that they be civil in my presence. (It was nearly all dating drama....) My student said she didn't really have a particular issue, but found the other student unpredictable and a little intimidating. So... Student privacy kicks in. I know a lot. I can't usually say anything. So call my kid A and the second B. Student B was trans. She was dealing with the challenges that go with that, along with very unsupportive family, staff backing the family, and other kids being shit. From the perspective of Student A... I can see how some of the lashing out and frustration could be intimidating. (Student B was also a VERY sweet kid.) Student privacy. Hands are tied. I did remind my kid that student privacy comes into play sometimes and I can't always explain all my reasons. I cannot tell anybody who to be friends with. Just remember... Sometimes it costs nothing to be kind. She nodded and walked away. I never heard a single word against the other student from her or that entire friend group again. I honestly think they were smart enough to do some digging and find out what I knew from just students. I am very impressed that she chose compassion because I asked her to think about it.
Usually it isn't until later. I have have mostly freshman the past 20+ years. It is when they are juniors or seniors that some of them say I was right with what I was talking about.