As I was monitoring my Facebook feed the other day, a friend of mine shared a blog post written by a parent about what one teacher does to monitor her students' feelings of belonging and inclusion. The mother talks about how the teacher has the students anonymously list three students who they would like to sit by the next week, and how she studies those requests to see which students are not being requested to sit by who may be lonely and may need some intervention. The author artfully threw in that this teacher had been doing this with her class (I think 4th or 5th grade) every Friday since Columbine in an attempt to prevent something similar from happening again by helping lonely students before it reaches a critical point. Although the blog post provided an impressive and insightful way of information gathering, it didn't go in to much detail about how the teacher actually goes about using the information she finds.
After I read the post, I tried to comment to try to get more information, but the site continually said it wouldn't post my comment because there was some sort of error (and now, as I try to go back to the post, the host says that page doesn't exist). So, I turn to you, my cohort and other small pocket of readers, to help me think about how to answer what I would have asked the original author.
Here is what I would have commented had I been able to:
"Wow. As a preservice teacher, I found great ideas in this post. I would be very interested in hearing what she does next with those students next. How does she arrange her room to try to make those who are outcasts more involved? How does she approach those who seem to be lonely? How does she actually go about using those lists to actually help the children in need?"
So what do you think? Once we discover which students are lonely, what can we do about it as teachers?
I've thought about this a lot too. There is one student in particular in my class that I am worried about. In the beginning of the year, I noticed he didn't seem to have a lot of friends in the class and that people weren't always very nice to him. Everyday he brought a big lunch with prepackaged snacks, which he would give away to people who wouldn't even say thank you. I often see him sitting through lunch alone.
ReplyDeleteOne of the small things I have been able to do is to make sure he is sitting at a group where he won't get left alone at lunch. My CT has asked me to make the seating chart 3-4 times now and I always try to think about students who might be feeling lonely when I am making it. I try to place those students with other students who I know are consistently friendly and nice.
I know this isn't much, but I hope its a small step towards helping them feel less lonely. I would also like to know what other things I could be doing. I always wonder about wanting to help a students but also not wanting to swoop in and try to fox problems. I try to remember that I don't have the whole picture.