Throughout internship’s 1, 2 and the beginning of 3, I have started to see the importance of relationship building and how teaching is much more than the content we facilitate. In this year especially with Covid-19, students are dealing with so much more emotionally.
At Hinkley, the first week of the Fall 2020 semester it was emphasized in our professional learning how students neurologically cannot effectively learn when they are in a heightened emotional state, i.e., fight or flight mode. If we were to facilitate any meaningful learning we first had to focus on social and emotional learning so that student's neurologically would be in a state conducive to learning. Similar to what I have learned at CU Denver, building relationships with students is a vital part of social and emotional learning. Part of building relationships requires paying attention to students and making observations. Katie Egan Cunningham discusses this below,
"As a teacher, I notice students who enter the classroom with their heads held down. I notice the ones who remain silent as they take their seats. I notice who is chatting and about what. I notice which students open their books with zeal, eager to get to the next chapter. I notice who comes to the rug leaning in to the story I’m going to share. I notice who takes to paper right away, scribbling away, believing his story is worth sharing. I equally notice who wrestles with books, who asks to go to the bathroom everyday during reading, and whose pencil remains parked until I come to her side."
-Katie Egan Cunningham
In science, students are encouraged to ask questions, make observations, collect, analyze and interpret data, and obtain, evaluate, and communicate information. As a science teacher, I never stopped to think about how it might be just as important for me to follow a similar process in terms of simply noticing students on a day in and day out basis, making observations and asking questions focused on where a student might be emotionally. The information gathered provides invaluable insight not only for instructional purposes, but more importantly for potentially recognizing if a student seems a bit off and perhaps could use someone to talk to or some other resources.
A STEM teacher to me practices what we teach not just with respect to science but with the overall well-being of our students.