Student Interest Survey
Heart Centered Teaching Check In
After reading, The Heart Centered Teacher (Restoring Hope, Joy, and Possibility in Uncertain Times) by Regie Routman I realized I had let the more in teaching put important things I use to do slide. I’ve decided to be more intentional this year and take time to make sure I get a picture of the whole child and opportunities to listen to their voice one on one.
One of my first action steps was to bring back the student survey.
My first five questions -
If you weren’t here at SMES today, what would you be doing?
What are some things you’re really good at?
What’s one thing you’d like to be better at?
What things are you interested in that you’d like to learn more about?
Does anything make you nervous?
If you were going to be our teacher tomorrow, what would you want to teach us?
Things I learned to help us this year -
B wants to learn about different people - celebrities, athletes and singers. He may want to read biographies.
O can tell me all about a mentos experiment from watching little science videos. She wants to do this and I think needs to do this because she radiates telling me about it.
Things that make us nervous - the first day of school, forgotting my lunch box, tests, fire drills, spiders, and heights.
Science is a “want to learn” this year and sadly, I’m finding it hard to fit in quality time for content and I know it shouldn’t be this way and now knowing this it can’t be this way.
I have one student who doesn’t really enjoy school. He was honest sharing that and sharing why and I hope to change that with time. I need to find more questions and observe him closely to find an entry point; something of interest that makes him smile.
Reflection
The responses and few moments this took with each student was joyful. It was interesting to see which questions got a quick response and which took a bit more time. That was different for each student. It helped me find commonalities and make some friendship connections. It helped me think about books students might like to read and who might need a little encouragement. I like the idea that one of my roles as a teacher is to encourage.