We Are All Human

It has been quite a while since I have written a post. I have let life get in the way of my focus on reflection and I have felt myself at times this year struggle as a result of it. Starting this year in a new school with new students and new expectations was challenging but add on top of it behavioral issues and it creates a whole new level of challenges. I feel like I have spent the majority of my year establishing expectations, reteaching expectations, and continually dealing with minor and sometimes major behavior problems. What I finally came to realize was that I really had been focusing on all of the wrong things.

Our students come to school every day with emotional baggage that wears them down before their walk in the door. Our students come from all walks of life and all types of family backgrounds, yet they are expected to achieve at the same level of those with much better life circumstances. Our students come from broken homes, abusive homes, homelessness, etc... and yet they are expected to achieve and behave at the same level? This is what I finally have come to realize over the course of this year. Our students are not misbehaving because they are bad people, they are misbehaving because they are crying out for help. They are seeking out attention from someone who will listen to them, focus on them as people that are in need of support.

I have been doing questions of the day every single week since the beginning of the year but over the last several weeks I have focused them specifically on facing adversity and talking through difficult situations. I firmly believe that 12-13 year old students are unable to carry the emotional baggage that they are expected to on a daily basis. Why do I think this is true? This is based off the fact that us as adults struggle carrying less emotional baggage than our students do. 

In order for our system as a whole to improve I believe a greater focus needs to on that social-emotional component that rarely gets discussed at staff professional development. It's the concept of how to help children fight through challenges and struggles that you rarely see in any sort of post-secondary program or class. It's the idea that we are all teachers of life rather than just teachers of content that you will rarely find on anyone's job title. These are the life skills that we should be teaching kids. 

We all go through struggles and adversity. We all have emotional baggage, many times heavier than we can carry. After all, we are all human.

Be a Light!
-Derek