Families

Children's families have a major impact on their learning styles, prior learning, personalities, and abilities when they enter a classroom. Every child is unique and so is every family, so the children in an individual classroom will have come from very different backgrounds, which can make creating lessons that will engage all students difficult, at times.

I feel that the teacher must have interactions with each child's family in order to gain perspective on why a child acts the way he or she does. When meeting a student's parents, teachers are able to see where the child came from and what kind of attitude his or her parents have towards schooling and other aspects of the child's life.

When my teacher does "thumbs up, thumbs down" with her students each day, most of them share something about their families, and I am always surprised when she responds to their statements because she is almost always already aware of the situation. One student in the class said that her mother had been really sick the night before, and the teacher commented on the fact that her mom's new baby would be coming soon and she would feel better soon. Every week I get a new example of how she is involved and engaged in the students' lives and families.

I know that it has taken her many years of teaching to develop these kinds of relationships, but I hope that, since I have had it modeled for me so early, that I will be able to do the same thing she does with my students' families quickly after beginning to teach.