Our world has gotten so small, smaller than when I was in school. I grew up living in Hong Kong, going to a Chinese speaking school, where I was the only nonAsian in the whole school of 600 students. And living in Hong Kong we know a thing or two about feeling like we live in small spaces, if you don’t, believe me, you can take a ride on our subway during rush hour. Living in such a small space with so many people, with so many cultures, with so many options, has given me a personal insight on what if feels like as a child in a classroom that doesn’t have a kind or caring environment, and because of that I have taken it upon myself to make sure that none of my students will feel the same.
I grew up in a school where I didn’t feel safe, I never felt like my teachers had my back. I was constantly bullied for my appearance paste skin, freckles and red hair. I was laughed at because of what passport I held. Others would mock what my parents would pack in my lunch, and it wasn’t always students who treated me poorly, but the teachers did as well too. As I got older I knew that all children need to feel safe in order to be able to learn. In fact, to quote Marzano “
Arguably the quality of the relationships teachers have with students is the keystone of effective management and perhaps even the entirety of teaching.” Perhaps even the entirety of teaching, I would have to agree with his “perhaps”. Our relationships with our students and the quality of them have a huge effect on the students lives. I never had a teacher when I was in elementary school that sparked my desire to learn. I wanted to learn, I loved learning, but I hated learning at school. All the science I learned in Elementary school were from Magic School Bus and Bill Nye The Science Guy. I never had a relationship with a teacher that attempted to build a relationship with me, to make sure I was alright. I believe that my teachers were in the wrong, students do need a relationship with their teachers, and just like any relationship, it takes effort and time to build on them, while focusing on key areas.
When asking students to explore issues of personal and social identity, teachers must provide safe spaces where students are seen, valued, cared for and respected. It is also important that students have opportunities to learn from one another’s varied experiences and perspectives. To create this learning environment, teachers need to skillfully draw on student experience to enrich the curriculum. ( Teaching Tolerance 2014)
What I found from reading Teaching Tolerance is “Listening. Deeply listening to what others say and to the feelings, experiences, and wisdom behind what they say.” This is what I attempt to do in class. This can be difficult to achieve in subject classes, especially when you are in upper grades. I still try to incorporate it into my class, when we have group discussions, shared experience, I listen with my whole heart to make sure I don’t miss a thing, that way I can ask them about the topic in the future. One time this last month, we had a new student transfer in, he was really struggling and I wanted to strike up a conversation with him, the conversation went quite negatively, he was convinced that he would have a bad time, I tried to encourage him but to no avail. The next time I saw him I asked him how his weekend was, was it really as horrible as he had anticipated, he was taken aback by the question and how I remembered, since then our relationship in class has improved because he now realizes that when he speaks I will listen.
The second point I connected to was humility, “Recognizing that, however passionately we hold ideas and opinions, other people may hold pieces of the puzzle that we don’t.”(Teaching Tolerence, 2014) I try to live this in my class, I also try and teach trust in my class. “Trusting the integrity of others, believing they have the right to their opinions (even when different from your own) and valuing others enough to risk sharing ideas.” as well as “Building a safe space to explore new ideas and work through conflicts, controversy and painful moments that may arise when talking about issues of injustice and oppression.” The best way I have found to teach this to my students is living by example, to show students what real humility is when I talk to my peers, superiors, or to my students. I try to show my students that they can trust me, modeling what integrity looks like, and valuing the students so that they feel that they are able to try and open up, without the fear of rejection.
Finally, I try to give students a voice in my class. “Speaking the truth as we see it and asking questions about things we don’t know or understand, particularly on topics related to identity, power and justice” (Teaching Tolerance, 2014) One example of this would be something that happened last month. I had to take a day off for a professional development, it just happened that on that day I had a substitute who monitored the class taking a test. During the test two of the students were accused of cheating. When I returned, I returned to one teacher who was adamant that they had cheated, two students who stressed beyond belief about being accused of cheating, the school counselor, and it was about to escalate to the principle. I felt more like a police detective listening to all the different sides of the story. I listened to how the students felt about the whole ordeal. One student tried to explain how they sits and why it might look like they might have cheated, only between sobs of now they felt the whole school would see them only as cheaters. In the end I told the students I wasn’t able to use the test they had taken, because there was a strong accusation that there was cheating involved, however, I knew the girls were not the cheating type, especially since I had noticed that they knew the content and it didn’t make sense for them to cheat. In the end I gave them the option of retaking the test in a different format. They took it sitting in front of me, and they passed with flying colors. When I followed up later with them, and their parents, they were happy that the student had a chance to speak up and stand up for themselves. And that the teacher was willing to hear their side without jumping to conclusions. Even though it was a tricky situation, in the end I felt confident that all the parties, teacher, parents, student, counselor, and principal were happy with the outcome.
