What will our students remember from our classrooms in a few years? Will it be the content we desperately tried to cover on a daily basis, the life lessons we hope to instill on occasion, or the way we treat them over the years?
For myself, very few lessons stand out over my many years in the classroom and any content not used on a regular basis through the years has long since been forgotten, but the way I was treated, even by my first grade teacher, still stands out more than 40 years later.
We may not want to think we run a baby sitting service or feel like some students don’t belong, but legally they have a right to be there and we do assume the responsibilities of a parent while the students are in our care.
If you have any doubts about how important our actions are, imagine that you have forgotten your wallet/purse in a restaurant. Now imagine calling the restaurant and asking them to look at the table you were sitting at earlier, you are informed that nothing has been turned in and that they are not responsible for lost items. You ask once more for them to just take a look at your table, when they tell you that they don’t have time and they remind you that they aren’t responsible for lost items. How long will it be before you go back?
Maybe, just maybe, if we focused on how we treat the students coming into our schools we would see a difference in the way they respond to our lessons.