One teacher's story about connecting students (from momastery.com)

"Every Friday afternoon Chase’s teacher asks her students to take out a piece of paper and write down the names of four children with whom they’d like to sit the following week. The children know that these requests may or may not be honored. She also asks the students to nominate one student whom they believe has been an exceptional classroom citizen that week. All ballots are privately submitted to her.

And every single Friday afternoon, after the students go home, Chase’s teacher takes out those slips of paper, places them in front of her and studies them. She looks for patterns.

• Who is not getting requested by anyone else?

• Who doesn’t even know who to request?

• Who never gets noticed enough to be nominated?

• Who had a million friends last week and none this week?

...Chase’s teacher is not looking for a new seating chart or “exceptional citizens.” Chase’s teacher is looking for lonely children. She’s looking for children who are struggling to connect with other children. She’s identifying the little ones who are falling through the cracks of the class’s social life. She is discovering whose gifts are going unnoticed by their peers. And she’s pinning down- right away- who’s being bullied and who is doing the bullying.

...And it’s a bully deterrent because every teacher knows that bullying usually happens outside of her eyeshot –  and that often kids being bullied are too intimidated to share.

But as she said – the truth comes out on those safe, private, little sheets of paper.

As Chase’s teacher explained this simple, ingenious idea – I stared at her with my mouth hanging open. “How long have you been using this system?” I said.

Ever since Columbine, she said.  Every single Friday afternoon since Columbine."

Ways I connect with students and connect students to each other:

• Student inventory:  my back to school student inventory starts with the basics (favorite food, activity, book, etc.) but it then asks students to dig deeper.  I ask about how they learn, past experiences, goals for the future, things that make them anxious and more.  

• Essentials List: after the student inventory, students generate an essentials list for me.  They choose what they want to share with me. I also share my own list with them.  In this way, we are all humans.

So, as I go back to school this fall, I will start by teaching people  And I will spend every week checking in on my students not only to see if they are getting the material but also to make sure they are connected.  Without connections to each other, we are setting up people to be lonely.  And sometimes that loneliness can turn ugly.

Will you take the time to connect with your students?  How?