Tag Archives: professional relationships

To Westdale’s Class of 2016

30 Thursday Jun 2016

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Dear Westdale Class of 2016,

I feel like I am one of you. On Tuesday, September 4, 2012, we all walked into the castle together for our first day at Westdale. For me, it was the beginning of my fourth year of teaching, and I was already entering my seventh school. I was especially hopeful, though, that that would be the year, that Westdale would be the school where I would finally be able to lay down some roots and stay for longer than one semester. I was beyond thrilled to teach French Immersion for the first time, combining my passion and love for each of my subject areas by teaching them in French. And I was surprisingly delighted to be entering a timetable of entirely grade 9 classes, with the hope that you would be the first students I would see through from the first day of grade 9 to your grade 12 graduation.

Watching you all walk across the stage last night filled my heart with pride. The intensity of emotion I felt was almost overwhelming. I’ve taught grade 12 classes in the past and attended grad every year at each school where I worked, but last night was so very special for me. To have even played the smallest part in your passage through the halls of Westdale has been the greatest honour and privilege I may ever know. To have witnessed you learn, grow, and become accomplished young adults has been the most gratifying journey I have ever travelled. To have learned so much from you about teaching, coaching, and mentoring, and about myself, are some of the most important lessons I will ever learn.

From day one, with my Grade 9 French Immersion Drama class on the fourth floor, to my Grade 9 French Immersion Geography class on the third floor, and my Grade 9 Girls’ Physical Education class on the second floor, you kept me constantly on the move and on my toes. I had at least one class of your grade and coached at least one sport for your age level each year. Some of you I have taught two, three, or four times, some of you I have coached in one or many sports, and some of you I have met only briefly. Each one of you has made an impact and holds a special place in my heart as my first group of students I’ve followed all the way through.

I ran early morning and after school practices with you; offered morning, lunch, and after school help sessions for you; chaperoned every one of your school dances, formals, and your prom; took you on athletic and extracurricular field trips; spent hours pouring over, evaluating, and commenting on your inspiring work; spent countless more hours planning lessons, units, and courses. I’ve invested four years in you, and I would never dream of taking back any of those hours for myself. There were wonderful days celebrating your successes, and there were difficult days where I wasn’t giving you my best self. You made me cry both tears of joy and frustration. You made me laugh every single day. You’ve given me more confidence as a teacher and as a leader than any group of students I taught before you. Each and every one of you is beautiful, intelligent, unique, and important.

To the class of 2016: I would wish you good luck in your next endeavours, but I know that you don’t need it. You will all achieve your best wherever you go and in whatever you choose to do. Thank you for being my first true graduating class. You have defined my experience at Westdale since we all started there together in September 2012. Thank you for teaching me so much.

Facilitating Learning Teams – Reflection on my Eighth Session of Leadership 1

18 Wednesday Feb 2015

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The eighth session last week centred around learning teams, collaborative inquiry, problems of practice, and how to facilitate, lead, and share leadership within learning teams and communities.

During our first main activity I decided to be brave and volunteer for the unknown! Each group needed someone to volunteer to be the red personality (the details of which were not disclosed before the activity), and then everyone else in the group received other coloured personalities. We each read our information (without sharing with each other), and then were given the scenario that we were a team planning our final leadership course session celebration, including guest list, budget, menu, seating, greetings, etc. It turned out that the red personality for which I volunteered was the facilitator of the group. At first I was pleased, as working on my facilitation skills is a personal goal of mine. However, I quickly realized that all the other personalities around the table were going to be very difficult to bring together and actually facilitate once everyone took on their roles. We had a snacker, a very intense time-checker, a constantly distracted member, someone constantly on their cell phone, basically every nightmarish behaviour that we have all experienced (or maybe even participated in!) during staff meetings. I actually found that I used some of what we learned in the previous session about managing conflict, as the time-checker and the distracted person were losing patience with each other. I also tried to redirect my phone user to actually look things up for us to try to make their phone use valuable to the task. I will say that it was almost exhausting trying to keep the whole ship afloat and make decisions within this group, and we only worked for 15 minutes. I did however very much enjoy the opportunity to attempt to hone my facilitation skills, even with such a difficult group!

One other takeaway from this session is the different types of questions that facilitators or team members can ask each other to resolve cognitive conflicts and move towards solutions. We looked at examples of clarifying, specifying, and exploring questions, specifically in the context of a problem of practice or inquiry question to expand or refine thinking as necessary. They were great question starters for teacher teams, but they also reminded me to focus on my questioning techniques with students when they are engaging in collaborative and inquiry-based learning in class.

Another thought-provoking session, as always, with only two more to go!

Defining The Ideal Leader – Reflections on My Third Session of Leadership 1

17 Monday Nov 2014

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The third session was quite multi-faceted, so I’ll be concentrating my reflection on only two activities. Firstly, as a means of introduction to the SAT (Self-Assessment Tool for Aspiring Leaders), we were asked in our groups and/or individually to define some characteristics, competencies, and practices of effective leaders. Following that initial brainstorming, we were asked to walk around and share our thoughts with people in other groups, in hopes of starting conversations, and perhaps identifying some common threads. On the surface, this activity seemed simple enough (kind of like a think-pair-share), but it ended up being shockingly difficult.

The majority of the brainstorming time in my initial group centered around defining and differentiating between characteristics, competencies, and practices. However, once the walk-around began, I quickly discovered that different groups and individuals had defined each term in different ways. A large part of almost every conversation I had was focused on deciding how to recategorize their information into my framework rather than the free and open sharing of ideas.

Once we returned to our groups, we debriefed and shared the information we gathered from other people. During this time I will admit that I was not the most active participant in the conversation as I still needed to process and categorize everything from my conversations in a satisfactory way before I could move on. Using my own thoughts and those of my group, I see:

Characteristics as personality traits and the heart of a leader

(flexible, passionate, approachable, organized, resilient, honest, humble, optimistic, inspirational, reflective, empathetic, equitable, brave, adaptable)

Competencies as the skills, knowledge, and the head of a leader

(competent in the norms of collaboration, knowledge of high-yield instructional strategies, skills in active listening, emotional intelligence, mediation and facilitation skills)

Practices as the visible behaviours, habits, and actions of a leader

(building trust and relationships by talking, listening, and showing appreciation, modelling effective instructional strategies, setting high expectations, setting goals, reflecting, facilitating, communicating and collaborating positively and regularly)

Would you agree with the definitions for each category? Would you add any other traits, skills/competencies, or actions to any of the lists?

Secondly, the course facilitators introduced the SAT document and invited us to explore and discuss it within our groups, and to begin pondering our own personal leadership growth plan based on our strengths and weaknesses we identified in the document. Again, I admit that this was another discussion period where I was not very active. The first time I am introduced to something, my preference is to study it individually before talking it through with others, so I spent the majority of this time studying and absorbing the various sections of the document.

I still don’t have much more to say about the SAT or my own plan as I haven’t had many opportunities to continue my reflection since the third session, what with a four-day school excursion, midterm report cards, and life getting in the way. Unfortunately, session 4 begins in less than 48 hours and I am supposed to have a rough outline of my leadership growth plan to share with my group facilitator. Based on my (limited) thinking so far, I think I will need to bring a few ideas to be fleshed out and to receive feedback. I have yet to strike the plan that feels just right – not too small and narrow, but not too large and daunting. Hopefully I’ll find Goldilocks tomorrow.

Parent-Teacher Interviews – How to Make Them Successful

08 Thursday Aug 2013

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I meant for this to be my March/April post since that’s when this semester’s interviews took place at my school. However, other priorities have taken over since then in my professional and personal life, and this blog got put on the backburner. Now that the semester has wound down, I’m finding some time to catch up.

 

Even though I’m now four full years into the teaching profession, I still get those nervous butterflies on Parent Teacher Interview night. My nervousness is completely unfounded as I have not yet had a negative experience in a parent interview. I’ve had a nagging insecurity since I began teaching that parents and my older colleagues will not take me seriously as a new teacher – that I’ll be seen as an amateur rather than an expert. Despite not having encountered any situations where that has been the case, I still take a proactive approach to meeting parents in order to project as professional an image as possible. Here are my tips for successful parent-teacher conferences.

 

1. Look the Part

Teaching is a profession, so it’s important to dress in a professional manner, especially when meeting parents. Some teachers only ever dress up for parent meetings and argue that the students should respect you as a teacher regardless of what you’re wearing. I can understand and appreciate this argument, but I personally choose to dress up for work every day and usually with a little extra if I have an important meeting with administration or with a parent. Certainly appearances aren’t everything – if you can’t back up your professional attire with appropriate behaviour, extensive subject knowledge, and caring for your students, then parents will see right through you. But looking the part does make a strong positive impression, and it demands a certain level of respect. It shows that you put in some time and energy in preparing for the interview and that you therefore deem it to be an important meeting.

 

2. Be Prepared

Since parents make appointments for interview night, it’s important to have a mark printout and talking points ready. Again, this is the professional thing to do, and it once more shows that you deem this conference to be important and valuable. As mark printouts can sometimes be difficult to interpret, I take the time to highlight key information, such as the student’s overall average, any very high or very low marks, and weight factors if some assignments/tests are worth more than others. This strategy also helps to calm my nerves as I have a clear, individualized plan of what to speak to for each student. I also make sure to add all of my contact information to the mark printout – phone extension, email address, Twitter account, and class website – so if parents have further questions after the meeting, they can easily get in touch with me again. Finally, I always bring a laptop with me for those inevitable drop-ins so that I can at least show a mark breakdown on the screen.

 

3. Be Open and Genuine

One thing I’ve found is often the parents are as nervous as I am, especially if their son or daughter is in grade 9 and this is their first set of parent-teacher conferences for high school. Coming into the interview with a defensive attitude only makes the parents defensive as well and sets a terrible tone for the meeting. Be open to their questions, and be genuine in your responses. Just remember the most important thing that you and the parents have in common – you both want the best for their son/daughter. Use that common care and interest as a foundation for the interview and you won’t go wrong!

Building Connections with Students – Is There a Universal Formula?

21 Thursday Feb 2013

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With the start of semester 2 this month, my focus has been on building connections and establishing professional relationships with my new crop of students. There is a very subtle shift that I tend to observe between day one and the end of week two; through that time my students become more comfortable with me and I with them so that we settle in and find ease with each other. It feels less awkward, and more like we’ve known each other for a longer span of time than two short weeks. How does this happen?

The most common response I get from students to this question is that I’m young, so they find it natural to relate to me. I have every class fill out a course evaluation for me at the end of the semester to inform improvements to my practice. I have had a performance appraisal in the past from an administrator, but them observing one class only gives a brief snapshot of my teaching. The students get the whole picture, day in and day out, and they often give the best and most poignant feedback about my strengths and weaknesses as an educator. The response at the beginning of this paragraph is one of the most common answers I get to the question: “What is the best thing about me as a teacher?” on my course evaluations. So I got to thinking these last two weeks, what is it aside from still being in my twenties that allows me to build relationships with students quickly and effectively?

Names

I almost didn’t even include this point because it seemed too small to merit its own section, but it is something I spend a lot of time on and have a certain process for. Learning every student’s name is my priority on the first day of class. I get each student to wave at me during attendance so I can start associating names with faces, and if they prefer a shorter version of their name, I fix it on my attendance sheet right away so that I won’t forget. Secondly, I make sure I have an activity where they are working independently or in small groups on that first day so I can walk around and talk to each student, saying their names as I speak with each one. Finally, when students arrive to class the next day, I say their names in my head and out loud as I greet them, and if there are any I have forgotten I quickly ask the student to refresh my memory. By five minutes into the second day of class, I always know every single one of my students by name. It’s such a small gesture, but I think that it shows them right off the bat that I care, that I am interested in them as individuals, and that each one of them is important to me.

Smiling and Being Friendly

It seems so basic and obvious, but just being a friendly face in the classroom and in the hallways goes a long way. Of course, I have heard the advice from older colleagues to not smile at all for the first x number of months to establish your authority in the classroom. I understand the idea: that if you’re too friendly students will just walk all over you. However, I don’t agree with this advice for two reasons.

Firstly, for me, that’s not the type of person I am, and the idea goes counter to what I believe about teaching and learning. I can be stern when necessary, but on the whole I’m a positive, friendly, happy person. Never smiling and acting like I’m the scary boss isn’t who I am, and if you’re not being yourself, students will be able to tell, and they will quickly lose respect for you. In addition, by acting more authoritarian than authoritative, you may succeed at having a quiet classroom at all times where on the surface it appears as if students are engaged and learning. However, learning does not always occur in isolation and silence. Certainly, there are times when you need full class attention and quiet to explain a new concept, but students also need time to interact with each other and with the material in order to construct their own understanding of the new information and to integrate it into their cognitive constructs. Also, just because students are quiet does not mean that they are listening or engaged in your lesson. If they are too scared or uncomfortable with your authoritarian presence, then students will not be open to learning and are likely to be quiet but disengaged.

Secondly, I would argue that students have more respect for the teachers who reach out and treat them as people, taking an interest in them and their education. When students see that you care about them, they want to do well and behave in the proper way in your class. Moreover, if your usual demeanour is more relaxed and positive, then when it is necessary to be more stern to the class or to a group of students, they truly know when you mean business. It’s quite a large shift from smiling/welcoming/happy to a serious face and tone, so students tend to react quickly. If you always look and sound severe, how are they supposed to know when you’re really serious?

Talking to Students

Again, like my first point, this seems obvious, but many teachers don’t take the time to talk to their students about their interests or what’s going on in their world. When I’m teaching French (core or immersion), it’s much easier to work in time for these types of conversations, as one of the curriculum strands is oral communication, so simply conversing with students in French on any topic is part of the curriculum. In courses where that’s less of an option, arriving to my classroom early or staying a little bit later provides the opportunity to have these types of conversations before class begins or after it ends.

I would say part of my ease in talking to students is most likely my youth, but I don’t believe that it is a necessity. It doesn’t take much to have topics of conversation with teenagers. I watch Sports Centre and follow sports in general (especially hockey), so I can talk about last night’s game with the sports fans in my class. I listen to the radio while driving to and from work and stay somewhat up to date with pop culture so I can discuss celebrities, music, movies, and television. Sometimes I even share my own interests now or what I was interested in during high school and find common ground with my students. Small things such as the fact that I play musical instruments, or what sports teams I played on in high school, or that I was always part of the school play remind students that I’m human and that I have gone through similar experiences to them.

Humour

Humour is a tricky one and highly personal, as everyone has their own unique sense of humour. As well, a misplaced joke or a funny comment skirting the line of what is appropriate for the classroom could just as easily alienate students. My style of humour is a bit goofy and self-deprecating. I show off my nerdiness and intense love for all things to do with school and learning, especially in my subject specialties, and poke fun at myself. Most students find this amusing and even endearing, since I’m not using any of them as the butt of a joke.

Working off that last point, I will admit that I do use sarcasm from time-to-time, despite some advice against it. Sarcasm works for me with high school students, especially with seniors, but I only use it with certain students who I know can handle it and only after I have gotten to know my class and they have become comfortable with me.

Conclusion

I would venture to say that there does not exist a hard and fast formula for forging professional relationships with students, as each teacher is different and each group of students is unique. However, I know that these are the four major steps that I take and ways that I behave in my classroom each day that facilitate these connections. And hopefully, as I age and gain experience, I will continue to be relatable to students by being young at heart.