Student Appreciation: Say Thank You for Hanging In There
As we move through the school year, it often becomes harder to avoid getting bogged down in the negatives of teaching. Whether it’s the profession in general or specific issues with your site or classes, it can start to feel like nothing is going right, nothing is good enough, no one is learning anything, and no one appreciates your hard work. You’re tired. It may feel like most of your students have given up. There is an insurmountable pile of essays to grade. Your unit didn’t work out as planned. You’ve discovered a schoolwide plagiarism ring and are gathering evidence like a detective (No? Just us?). Your site keeps demanding more from you while simultaneously second-guessing all your decisions. Our educational system is deeply broken and most efforts to fix it feel like putting a tiny Band-Aid on a gaping wound. It doesn’t help that the general public seems to see teachers as complainers who get an overly generous summer off rather than exhausted, limited humans doing their best and hanging on by a thread.
All these things wear on us. As more teachers leave the profession, we keep hearing the word “thankless”: we run ourselves ragged for our schools and our students and often feel underappreciated. But sometimes it’s helpful to stop and think about another group who often doesn’t get the thanks they deserve: the students who quietly hang in there, day after day, not giving up despite the constant pull telling them they can and should, and that there are minimal consequences for doing so.
One of Steph’s tutoring clients reminded us recently that students can often be feeling their work is “thankless,” too. He’s in AP US History, and he’s supposed to complete a reading guide for each of 40 chapters in his textbook, identifying key events and their significance, connecting them to themes that run through other periods of history, and analyzing key primary source documents. If completed thoughtfully, it’s an assignment that will go a long way toward helping students with the kind of thinking they need to be successful on the AP exam and understand our country’s history as more than just a collection of facts to be memorized. It’s a great assignment with the potential to be very meaningful. Exactly the type of assignment, our own experience tells us, that can spell disaster. In this case, he shared, however, that his teacher barely looks at these study guides; most of his classmates just submit the same document for each chapter and receive full credit. It would be so tempting, for anyone, but especially a busy AP student, to just stop doing the work and start doing what his classmates are doing. He knows he could take the easy way out, but he still completes each assignment because he wants to learn and because he knows it’s the right thing to do. It’s frustrating for him to watch his classmates receive the same credit as him without putting in the same amount of effort.
We’ve always tried to be mindful of student frustration levels and remember to acknowledge the effort students put into work for our classes (and respect that effort by actually grading it, but we digress . . . ), but with the pandemic, when so often doing school seemed to be “optional” for so many, we began to make recognizing the efforts of these students with a literal and specific thank you a part of our end of semester routine.
Here are some of the things we consider:
-
Who hasn’t given up in your classroom?
-
Who greets you by name every day with a smile?
-
Who hasn’t missed an assignment all semester?
-
Who told you they really enjoyed the book you assigned?
-
Who surprised you with an insightful comment during class discussion?
-
Who waits patiently while you deal with yet another disruption from the students in the back row?
-
Who keeps putting their very best work into assignments?
-
Who doesn’t use a homework pass to skip out on assignments, even though they can?
These students deserve our thanks. Sure, it’s their job to do their work, but just as we want acknowledgment that we’re giving our best every day, so do they. Find the students in your classroom who are still going strong, who quietly do what’s right even when they don’t have to, who refuse to give in to the apathy that has taken hold of their peers. It can help you, at least temporarily, focus on the good at the end of the semester, rather than being preoccupied by all the disappointments: recognizing the efforts of these students reminds you both what you’re there for and that each other’s effort is appreciated. It means a lot to students when they know you’ve noticed their quiet and steady hard work, especially when they aren’t the “award winners” receiving constant recognition for their achievements and top grades. They know when their classmates have given up, and they’re often just as frustrated by it as you are. Your encouragement tells them their efforts have not gone unnoticed and motivates them to keep working as well.
Who are you grateful for this school year? Make sure to tell them, and spread encouragement by sharing this post with a colleague. Tell us, too: email us at [email protected] or DM us on Instagram @threeheads.works. We love hearing about the wins that are keeping you going.