Building relationships
Building relationships and trust with my students is a very important aspect of my classroom. I was lucky to be gifted a period with just my girls as Mrs. Scott had a hygiene presentation for all the grade 5/6 boys. I thought for a long time how I wanted to fill that 37 minutes of girl time in my room. Through my experiences as a member of the Delta Gamma women's fraternity at the University of Alberta, I was able to build relationships with many diverse women in a trusting environment. Thinking back to these 'team building' opportunities I decided on two separate activities that would lend themselves building the self-esteem of my girls and their bonds with me as well as each other.After reading parts of Jody Carrington's book Kids these days it has only reaffirmed my goal of being a personal connection based teacher.
First, we would start our period with the preface that anything shared in this lesson was private and not to be shared and feel free to be open and honest but remember that these activities will all be silent. The activity we started with was called "stand on the line". This is similar to the activity seen in the movie "Freedom Writers". I started with very basic questions like "Stand on the line if you have a sister", "stand on the line if you have a cellphone", etc. Once a few of these questions have been asked I move to more personal questions such as "stand on the line if you have heard gunshots from your house before", "stand on the line if you have seen some use excessive drugs or alcohol", "stand on the line if you have used drugs or alcohol". The girls did very well with this activity and it is designed to make them realize that they are not alone. Some interesting questions I got responses to were "stand on the line if you see yourself as a leader" - no one stepped forward. I also asked the question "stand on the line if you feel you have been treated unfairly because you're a girl" and every girl stood on the line.
The second activity we did is still one of my favourite activities I have ever done, even as an adult. I could not find the activity anywhere but I made it up from memory of doing it in university. I called the activity "Give your heart away". Each girl is given a bag of hearts with different colours and styles of hearts inside. We stand in a circle facing each other. I will read the description of the heart and each girl will give away that heart to the person they feel matches the description. If they cannot think of anyone they can keep their heart and wait for the next round. As we did with the previous activity, there is no talking or explanation allowed when you hand over the heart. I start out with the easy hearts to give away and then progress to more serious and thought-provoking hearts. For example, we started with "give your yellow heart to someone who always makes you happy", "give your pink heart to someone who makes you feel proud to be yourself".We then progressed to "give your blue heart to someone who needs extra love right now" and it was truly touching to see the girls line up to all give their hearts to a student in our class who has been having a hard time lately and it was visible when she accepted the hearts that she was shocked and touched, it even appeared that she sat up straighter like a weight had been lifted for her. At the end of the activity, all the girls are able to take home a baggie full of hearts that their classmates had given them. As soon as we had finished the game the girls all ran to their lockers to hang up their hearts or baggies of hearts as a reminder of the activity. I also finished the period by reminding the girls to remember this day as they grow older and to build each other up and be a family even when they are in Jr. High and later in life. It was a very powerful activity to be a part of.
I have attached the document I used to guide myself as the facilitator.
I asked some girls in my class their thoughts or feelings about the activity. One student said, "she liked the game where there was a line and you had to be honest with each other and yourself about things in your life". Another girl said," she liked giving the hearts to who it belonged to because I could see how many hearts everyone got to take home".
Here is a picture of the baggie of hearts I was able to take home.
Here are some of my favourite quotes from Jody's new book, this book has really helped me find my joy of teaching again this year. In all honesty this year I have felt a little overwhelmed and like I wasn't loving my job anymore which is something I hoped to never feel. Lucky for me that I picked this book up at convention and it helped bring me some perspective and appreciation for my work. I hope it will help some of you as well.
