"Well it helps when your teacher actually likes you." As I heard these words come out of my student's mouth, I realized I had heard them before, quite a few times actually. He went on to explain how it felt at his previous schools when teachers had blamed him, yelled at him, and hadn't heard him. In his own words he was telling me, and his social worker, that he has always felt as though he didn't have a voice at school, until now.
In September I really did not think this boy would make it. He was rude, loud, angry and arguementative in a complex way. I often felt threatened by him. However, something inside me moved me closer to him when his behaviors escalated. I listened harder instead of backing away when his voice became mean. Sure enough, he slowly began to change, both in my classroom and in his home. Six months later I am dealing with a completely different boy...and now I am hearing that he attributes his entire self makeover to the fact that he believes that I like him. How incredibly simple.
I recently listened to a talk about attachment by Gabor Mate. He spoke strongly about the main human drive being to attach to another human. He says our at-risk students are struggling because of the adult humans in their lives being unable to attach to them. Not having a strong human attachment causes lonliness and acute stress. Stress manifests into all kinds of sicknesses, disorders and learning disabilities. In order for the alternate children of the world to start to succeed and learn, they first have to attach to an adult human. As an alternate teacher, I have to be that human. His words really hit home with me because I was born innately knowing and practising this, but I have always felt like I am being taught to not attach to my students. Don't get too close, don't hug them, dont give them your last name, don't actually get into their lives, stay distant....just teach. But I was born with the gift of connection, and I know for a fact that these kids dont truly learn until they are so close that they are calling me mom. I have concrete proof that Gabor is one hundred percent correct.
After Gabor spoke, a handful of teachers questioned him about attachment. They asked questions like, "What excersises can you give us that will fascilitate attachment and connection in the classroom?" Seriously? This is where we are missing the point. There is no lesson plan for love. If a student truely believes that you like them, they will attach. So the question should be, "How do I show a student that I truely like them and still be professional?" As alternate teachers we need to be able to step outside of the box that tells us not to show love for our students. All they need is love. All anybody needs is love.
A student showed up to my class the other day in brutal shape. She had been drinking all night, she was in pajamas, and she had a pitbull bite on her leg that was massive. She said she was feeling awful, but she woke up after a night in emergency and demanded to be driven to school because she needed her family right now. Her family... her class. She just wanted to be hugged and she needed the attention and the attachment that her classroom has to offer. Love.
Today, as we do often, we turned our classroom into a restaraunt. We cooked tacos. Thirteen students contributed to the meal, and each student embraced their contribution with more than open arms. We had the music pumping; we were singing, laughing, joking, dancing, and cooking together. We sat down to a family dinner (a term the kids coined themselves) and ate. As I sat there and watched my little darlings passing the food around, saying please and thank-you and sorry when they swore, and laughing so so much, I actually truely felt the love. It was tangible and thick. My classroom is in love. My kids are attached. There is not one student excluded. I am very proud of this.
I tell my students that I love them, because I actually do. I have seen first hand what love can do to change behaviors. I think if you interviewed my students you would find that every single one of them feels like I really do love them and that I would go out of my way to help them. Academics and curriculum is not actually all that important in the grand scheme of things. What is important is love, and we cant buy a text book for that.
