2 X 10

This is something that I learned from my research into how to become a better teacher and I honestly cannot remember which source I learned this from but if anyone knows, please let me know and I will edit this post to give them credit for this.

This strategy works really well in emotional support classrooms. One of the best things that you can do to improve behaviors in your class is to build relationships with students. Students want to know that you are a good person that they can trust. There are a few ways to build a relationship and build trust but the best way to do this is through time. Unfortunately, if you just wait until your students with emotional disabilities start to warm up to you - its gonna be a long first 3 months. An easy way to speed this up is to pour more time into your students. At every high school that I have ever worked at, students had five minutes to get from one class to the next. The best thing that you can do is use that time to get to know your students. Use the 2 x10 strategy.

The first thing you want to do is pick a student that you are really struggling to connect with. Then every day before class starts for the next 10 days talk to them for 2 minutes. Ask them about anything, but keep the focus on them unless you have something short that you can add on to one of their statements. The key is that this shows the student that you are interested in them. You care about them. Once the student knows that you care about them, they don't want to upset you, they don't want to make your life harder. Then they even start to tell other students to behave in your class. It is really easy and it really works.

Here are some tips for this to be more successful:

1. Try and do this privately as the student will be more honest without an audience

2. Try and do this before the student even enters the room as this kind of makes the distinction that outside the classroom is a great place to talk about personal life and inside the classroom is a great place to talk about content.

3. Try to get outside of your classroom as soon as possible so you can talk to the student before they come in

4. Make sure that your transitions are smooth before classes so you can give the student your full attention when talking to them.

5. Try to create questions or talking points before the conversation so you have plenty to talk about. It's always good if you create a quick one-liner to brush through the awkwardness at the beginning of the conversation. Normally I start by asking the student to talk to me for a second and normally the first thing that I do is ask the student if they have a job. Then if they say yes, I have them tell me about the job and at the end of the conversation, I ask them to talk to me if they are having any issues balancing schoolwork and work. If they don't have a job, I offer to help them find one. Either way, you have offered something and the student knows that you want to help them be successful.

Try this strategy out and hopefully it will work for you.

P.S.

Please feel free to follow the blog on twitter @teachinteaching, please subscribe and if you really like the blog - tell your friends to subscribe and maybe venmo some cash to support the blog @Teachinteaching and you can always email your thoughts to teachinteaching@yahoo.com Thanks!