RHB20230717 - Liking all students¶

Yoh... Day one back from holidays was hard. Firstly, I am not teaching fit, it felt like drinking from a fire hydrant. But secondly, the thing I found particularly difficult was a specific class that was not at all interested in learning. They were still firmly planted in holiday mode. This definitely caught me off guard and frustrated me more than it should have. I felt that I had spent a lot of time in the holidays preparing a well thought out coding project, now the students who I prepared it for were not interested. I walked away from the day feeling quite despondent.

There have been many other times during my 10 years of teaching that I have felt genuinely saddened by my interactions with students on a particular day. I remember in my old school, I was a physics teacher and the one class that I taught HATED physics. The only reason that they took it was because their parents had told them to. I literally had to psych myself up before every lesson to get some kind of energy to walk in there and teach. I dreaded it.

What do we do when students don't like us? Should we have to like all the students that we teach? What do we do with difficult students?

The relationship between teachers and students is so crucial for learning. I have found that if a student does not like you, then there is little chance that they will learn from you. Often the students I resonate with the most are the ones that do exceptionally well in my subject. We are in the business of relationships. So liking a student helps in their success. But there are just some students that no matter how hard we try, we can never build a relationship with them.

It is important to differentiate personal liking and professional duty. We are professionals who have chosen the responsibility of educating young minds. We have chosen to be the custodians of the youth and the perpetuators of culture. As Craig often says, we spend more face-to-face time with the students than their own parents. Teaching is a tremendous privilege and, at the same time, an immense burden. So, unfortunately, we will often have to put our feelings aside.

Teaching is a journey filled with challenges, but it is through these challenges that we sculpt the minds of tomorrow. Growth requires friction. Helping students to become their best selves is hard. But that's what we do.

Some questions that I am pondering this week: 1. Who are some students who I am purposefully not engaging with? 2. Are there students that I favour over others? 3. Are there lessons where I am not enforcing class rules in order to avoid conflict? 4. Do I assume that I know where a student is at emotionally and mentally?

My goal this week: create a structured, warm classroom that pushes students for academic excellence and does not tolerate "negative" behaviour.