I have been teaching about how important relationships are with our students for years. This morning I received an email from Gavin McCormack who voiced the same opinion. It’s all about the relationship we genuinely build with our students that makes the difference.
Students can readily know the difference between a genuine or fake teacher. I could tell you many stories of students coming to me when I was a guidance Counsellor, complaining about their teacher not liking them. I always tried to find ways to connect them with their teacher but some of the teachers were too afraid to connect. They didn’t know what they were missing.
When we show our students that we too are trying our best but sometimes fail, we help them try and accept that failure is part of learning. There is no way to learn without failure. So, I always make it a point to say to the students, “Oops, I made a mistake! I’m going to try to fix it.”
It’s a miracle to see their faces light up and try something they didn’t think they could do!
So, let’s be genuine in our attempts as teachers to model learning and making mistakes.
