Shaken Up

The first week of school flew by - and it certainly seemed that, aside from the chattiness, everything was fine.

The problem was, it wasn't.

An email from a parent caught me off-guard on Friday morning as I was preparing to leave for school. Her daughter (who is new to our class) had been visibly upset every day - she cried on the way home, and she did not want to come to school. She was upset because she had felt excluded at lunch, especially before another student in our class invited her over to another lunch table. The student's mother was not upset, but she was concerned.

As a teacher, this was crushing. After spending so much time in preparation for creating a warm, loving, and inclusive classroom environment, a student still ended up remaining on the fringe.

What had gone wrong?

After composing my thoughts, I replied to the mother - I spoke about how we could set up a buddy system with another student in the class. That way, her daughter would have someone looking out for her (without her knowledge) to make sure she had a place to sit in the lunchroom, etc. until she got to know the other students more on her own. (And I had just the student in mind who would be a great buddy.) This idea came to me because I had just read about something similar done in the young adult fiction book Wonder (which I blogged about this summer), where a student new to the school had other students looking out for him until he was more familiar with the school and his classmates.

I also suggested that our student sit at the peanut-free table, as it is a place in the lunchroom with a smaller number of students (all girls) who are very friendly. (I figured it would be a little less intimidating.) So, on Friday, I checked the student's lunch box in hopes that I would find a peanut-free lunch (which I did!), so I suggested she sit at that table, and she did.

According to her mother, with the help of the student buddy and with my co-teacher's discussion of feeling comfortable at the start of school (during our community circle meeting), there were no tears after school on Friday. Yay!

This situation makes me realize a few things. Even though I consider myself a very aware teacher, there are still interactions and feelings among the students that I can miss. This means that we, as teachers, cannot emphasize enough the importance of students feeling comfortable to come to us should they (or one of their classmates) experience exclusion, bullying, or any other feelings of being uncomfortable. It also means that communication has to be open and inviting for parents too, when, in situations such as this one, a student lets out feelings on their parents but not necessarily at school. (And this also means that parents need to spend time with their children, asking them about their day and making sure everything is all right.)

I'm not perfect. I know that. And the mistakes I make in the classroom are ones I can learn from - such as the fact that I messed up the "I have, who has?" game on Friday during Math. However, under no circumstances are mistakes or unawareness when it comes to students' well-being something to be taken lightly or remedied slowly. These things (even if, for some reason, they are overlooked at first) must be corrected immediately, and they must be monitored and followed up throughout the year.

And I must do my best to make sure such exclusion doesn't happen in my classroom again.