Educators value the success of all students. Educators care for students and act in their best interests.
Before I began my final practicum, I was warned by my Coaching Teacher (CT) that I may face challenges with one of my students (J). My CT explained to me that in all of her years of teaching, she had never experienced a student like J before. She seemed to have exhausted all of the tools in her “tool kit” and was excited for the two of us to learn and work through this together. I won’t lie, I was extremely nervous since an experienced teacher was having difficulty working with this student. However, I was eager to learn and have the experience.
The first couple of weeks were quite tough for me as I wasn’t sure what I was doing. He wasn’t really listening to anything I was asking him to do, and when asked why by my CT he would say things like “I just don’t recognize her”. When I think of a kindergartener saying a sentence like that, I think that the deeper meaning behind what he is saying is “I just don’t know her”, therefore meaning “I just don’t trust her”. This was a wake up call for me and really forced me to work on my relationship with this one student. Relationships just came easy for me with every other student, but J was different. He wasn’t just going to let me off easy and instead of just setting it aside and looking past the situation, I decided to accept the challenge.
I am so glad that I worked hard to not only develop a relationship with J, but really understood who he was as a learner. I valued his success and I showed it by caring for him and working hard at our relationship. I made decisions in the classroom (I.e. a seating chart at the carpet and at the tables where he wasn’t going to distract other students learning but allow himself to stay focused) that he may not have liked, but in turn led to his overall success.
An example of this included the time we were working on letter formation using Play-Doh and J’s was not wanting to participate, he just wanted to play with the Play-Doh. All I needed to know was whether or not he could form the letters, he didn’t have to use the Play-Doh (it was only supposed to make it more fun). Therefore I decided to quickly take him aside, allow him to physically print the letters on the whiteboard and then allowed him to continue playing with his Play-Doh. He would not have had success in the lesson had I not differentiated that part of the lesson for him. He wouldn’t have had the practice and I wouldn’t have been able to assess his learning.
I continue to act in the best interest of all my students and always value their success. It is my job to make sure that each student succeeds to the best of their ability and are equipped to do so.