Building Self-Esteem/Rapport: The "Love Letter" Project
Has anyone ever asked you what you teach, and you answered something like... "Oh, I teach seventh grade." or "I teach Language Arts."
True, but as an instructor, we don't really teach a particular subject, we teach children. Since we, as teachers, instruct children, then we owe it to our students to tailor the learning to meet their individual needs.
Sadly, one of the needs of students frequently overlooked is their emotional well-being. Now, mind you, I'm not in on some bizarre project to "socially engineer" students or to cut out valuable information to make everybody feel good about himself; rather I teach "the basics" and then show my students HOW to THINK. Although I care about my students and their problems, I am not one who is PRIMARILY concerned with the students' well-being. I take my "job description" seriously, and strive to cover as much grammar, vocabulary, writing, and literature as humanly possible in the short time I've got them as a captive audience.
Yet, somehow, I've noticed how much harder they try to please and how much more enthusiastically they participate in their own education when my students knew how much I liked them. Somehow, there has to be a balance between "cold, hard facts" and "rapport."
One year I had a particularly disagreeable class. Many of the students put each other down, and I spent a considerable amount of time "refereeing" minor disputes that would arise among them. There was almost a tangible tension in the air, and as each day passed, I grew more tense. About halfway through the school year, I knew I had to do something. I hated going back upstairs after lunch to teach that particular class! I knew that if I hated to go to that class, many of my students must hate that class, too. Certainly most of them were astute enough to "read" my ill feelings.
I wish that I could pass off the idea that I used as one of my own, however, I had no creative response to the quagmire we found ourselves in. Quite by accident, I was listening to a book on tape [one of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series] that told a story that I felt could positively influence my class. I rewound the tape and took it to school.
We listened to the story of a teacher who had each student take out a sheet of paper and number it one less than the total number of students in the room. Each student would proceed to write one complete sentence that stated something positive about each student in the class [omitting himself].
The copyright of the article Building Self-Esteem/Rapport: The "Love Letter" Project in Teaching Language Arts is owned by Kelley M. Rubben. Permission to republish Building Self-Esteem/Rapport: The "Love Letter" Project in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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