week 13: summary of A Four Part System for Getting to Know Your Students

Often, the most effective relationship building happens organically, but I like the idea of having a concrete plan for relationship building with students. I know I am intentional about relationship building at the start of the year, but I could improve on maintaining and intentional relationship building throughout the year. Especially with virtual learning, I’ve found the group of students that I feel like I don’t know as much about is larger.

The four parts in the system are: break the ice, take inventory, store your data and do regular checkups. What I think would be most beneficial to strengthen for my teaching practice is storing my data and referring back to it. I learned this year how to bookmark websites or google documents (I know I’m a little late in the game) so the excuse of “well that file is buried in multiple folders and I don’t want to go pull it up” doesn’t fly any more. I liked the example in the article that if there is a math story problem about cooking, quickly pull up the inventory sheet and see which kids like cooking so you can reference them by name. I currently have a good system for recording my parent contact for each hour. I wonder if I could incorporate interest/inventory questions into the current document I already use.