Shower the people - 5 ways to let your students know you love them and engage them in the process

I recently had one of those revelations so clear and common sense that I thought I must be the last teacher in the world to realize it. My students need to know how I feel about them, every day.

Just about everyone in education acknowledges how crucial relationships are when it comes to creating a classroom culture where students can thrive, but often, the specifics of this process can be hazy. And teaching can be really hard - University of Chicago researcher Phillip Jackson estimated teachers make an average of 1500 educational decisions in a single day.

Teachers obviously wouldn’t be doing this job if we didn’t care deeply about the young people we spend hours with everyday - not to mention the other hours we spend thinking about how to better help them learn. But just because we love our students doesn’t mean they know this. As an introvert, I have a tendency to avoid imposing my emotions on others and it took me way too many years to realize that if I don’t make my feelings obvious, they will for the most part go unseen.

I’ve always been mostly mystified by the concept of student engagement, but a few years back, Dave Burgess’  “Teach Like a Pirate” helped me realize that not only are there myriad ways to be creative in the classroom, but that the most important part of engagement is to let your students see the joy you find in your engagement with them. So, I began to step out of my comfort zone, showing students how I felt about them, and the response I got back was so positive that I have never gone back.

Here are some ways I let my students know how much I care about them:

1. I see you:  Every day, I make a point of looking each student in the eyes and smiling. Often this will happen as they walk in the door, but if not, I’ll find a way to make contact with them sometime during class. I also do this in the hall with students who I may not know. I read somewhere that there are students that go through the day without being acknowledged by another human being. Whether or not this is true, they will be seen by me. It’s a small gesture but it’s had a huge payoff when it comes to the culture in my classroom.
2. Popsicle sticks: Discussion is a foundational part of my pedagogy, but teachers know that classroom discussion can often be dominated by a handful of talkative students, while the majority of the voices go unheard. I’ve learned that a simple system of random selection not only vastly expands the number of students who participate in classroom discussions, but ups the engagement of people in the room who might otherwise tune out if they don’t think they’ll be called on to share their ideas. There are some cool random number generator apps like Pretty Random that have come out to aid in this process, but I find I always come back to the low tech popsicle sticks.
3. Conferencing: While I have refined my writing and reading feedback methods over my 19 years of teaching,  there’s nothing that gives more bang for my buck than a few minutes of individual conversation with my students. Whether it is discussing how to improve a thesis statement or recommending a new book to read, talking with my students is the best way to figure out  what students need and to get to know them better as people.
4. Call home for the good stuff: Often,  I’ll pick out one or two students and make a call home to tell parents about something good I’ve noticed about their child. Parents are usually dubious at first, and then grateful, and while it’s nice to have positive interactions with parents, I’ve noticed that the process of finding students to call about changes my whole focus in the classroom; by looking for the good stuff, my perception of the day is more positive. Win, win!
5. Just tell them: I have started to make it a practice to tell my classes as a whole as well as individual students the wonderful things I notice about them. Educators know the important effect of positive interactions, but it’s easy to let the day slip by without acknowledging the wonderful things our students do or say. Just yesterday, I mentioned to my sophomores how impressed I was with the way they disagreed with each other in kind and productive ways, seeking to understand rather than put other points of view down. We’ve been working on communication skills and this is often the one of the most difficult for them. One of my boys who also happens to be on the JV football team enthused about a book he was reading in class the other day, and I just happened to see two other boys in class reading that same book in the week following. I made sure he knew about his influence in the moments during passing period before the tardy bell rang and though I only got a “Cool.” in response, his smile showed how much these interactions are worth.

There was a time I would have avoided these type of interactions with my students in fear of looking awkward or fake, but the truth is I do care deeply about my students and they deserve to know this. And ever since I’ve begun to shower my students with love, the harvest has been bountiful.