Relationships are Remedies

If you ask me what the number one thing is in my classroom, I would answer with relationships. I am a huge fan of Twitter and the different educational chats. In a chat the other night, I had a revelation: I don't think I have gone one chat, regardless of the topic, without mentioning relationships. Relationships are everywhere and in everything. Struggling to engage students? Relationships. Struggling to get kids to behave? Relationships. Struggling with anything? Relationships. Basically, the point is clear-- relationships are huge and can make or break your classroom.

Regardless of whether a relationship is there or not, kids are going to do things we may not always want. They are kids and will make mistakes. When they do these things, we want to communicate to them that what they did is not the expectation and provide them ways to fix it. One of my kids in particular has a rough go at home. This can come into school with him. Sometimes, he will do things that are flat out disrespectful and not the appropriate ways of handling situations. Am I tempted to yell and scream and throw things immediately? I'd like to say no, never...but we all have our patience limits. Sometimes we want to do all of those things and more because we can't understand why after the 100th time of having this conversation, here we are again. That's when we have to step back and think to ourselves...Does this kid need us to scream right now? Does this kid need us to tell him how awful he is? Does this kid need us to be one more adult in his life who just sees the bad? Absolutely not. We need to love kids when they are begging us not to. We need to love kids when they make us want to rip our hair out. We need to love them when they are unlovable.