Dear Teacher’s Lounge,
We only have twenty-four hours in each day, and as an assistant I am trying to make every day important. While on my school bus I am grateful for the students and greet each one with a smile and “good morning” to start their day. It is difficult to even get a response. As I transition into the classrooms I stay busy working with all of the students that I can give assistance to. How can I stay positive with a smile on my face every day while getting negative responses all day? Sometimes I just want to rip off my mask, hug these students, and just say “I love you” to each one of them!
~Keeping My Smile
Dear Smile,
What a shock returning to buildings has been for staff and students alike, particularly when we cannot rely on some of the key relationship-building strategies we’ve had in the past to let the kids know we care about them. It is heartbreaking.
When I read your message, I can see how much you love the students you serve. To help ease your mind a little bit about some of the vibes you’re getting from them, I want to make one really important distinction between a negative response and a lack of discernible response. For example, you talked about how you keep smiling. Sadly, the kids cannot see your smile, so for them, they could perceive seeing just a blank where the mask is as a negative response when really, you’re doing the opposite. The same holds true for how you receive the responses from students; they might be smiling, or frowning, or sticking out their tongues, or just making no expression at all. Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing. When you greet them and they are silent, there could be all sorts of reasons why, from being shy to feeling constrained by the masks and distancing. In general, it might be more beneficial to try and reframe the responses as neutral at worst rather than negative, and you might feel a little more positive about how things are going.
In regards to the now very different process of building relationships with kids given the pandemic restrictions in buildings, we have all been developing strategies over the course of the past few months that might be worth trying. Here is a list of just a few ideas:
No matter what strategies you try, here’s the bottom line: don’t give up. Children are looking to us to keep it together and be a force of stability in a world that seems to have gone absolutely insane. Working in a school is never easy, and it’s even harder with so many barriers. We owe it to ourselves to have compassion for everyone in this situation (ourselves included), and to be okay with some very slow progress toward building the relationships that might take longer, but are so very worth it.
Please feel free to write back in and let us know how things are going!
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Written by Miriam Plotinsky, Education World Contributing Writer
Miriam is a Learning and Achievement Specialist with Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland, where she has worked for nearly 20 years as an English teacher, staff developer and department chair. She is a National Board Certified Teacher, and recently earned her certification in Education Administration and Supervision. She can be followed on Twitter: @MirPloMCPS
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