Supportive

9.25.10 By Rachel Singh

One of my big ideas before I came to BTR was that classrooms should be values-centered. If education is to be liberating, we need classrooms to teach students compassion and justice, alongside literacy, math, and critical thinking. Teachers need to be deliberate in how they cultivate and nurture the community of their classroom and the values to which they appeal in their rules and norms. In my first week as a resident, I wondered exactly how teachers intentionally build communities, so when my mentor offered to let me facilitate our “class promises” conversation, I jumped at the opportunity. Last week, she attempted to have the students brainstorm norms with very limited success. I grouped the list into four categories that fit within Young Achievers’ “Habits of Mind” - respectful, responsible, safe, and supportive - and tried to help them sum up each category with a sentence or class promise.

I started with the value “supportive,” because to me, a community is a place where everyone matters. I tried to convey the idea that no one learns alone and we all needed to help each other to be successful scholars. Unfortunately, they did not know what “supportive” meant. They know “encourage,” but only to the extent that it means that you don’t laugh when someone makes a mistake. They also kept saying “respect” - probably because they knew that it was an answer that adults were looking for in similar such discussions - but I’m not convinced that they really understood what behavior was respectful and why. I could feel my lesson falling flat, so I rushed through it with my mentor’s help and tried to move on. Six years old is quite young, after all, so I was questioning if they really could grasp the abstract concept of a value.

Later that afternoon, I did a mini-lesson on a reader’s response to a book I had just read aloud. I was drawing a picture of a mouse when a student cried out, “That doesn’t look like a mouse, that looks like a person,” while others laughed. I ignored them, feeling stung, when another student called out, “You shouldn’t laugh, she’s doing her best drawing!” with such earnestness that I turned around and thanked him. I told the class that I felt embarrassed that they were laughing at my drawing and that my defender was doing an excellent job being supportive. Immediately after I spoke, another student cried, “You made her feel bad!” and I heard, “Good job!” and “I like your drawing” a few times. Oh, six year olds! I question the sincerity of the later speakers, but I was so touched by my first defender that I wrote him a note to thank him. I wanted to acknowledge his kindness and courage, especially since he taught the class what being supportive looked like far better than I could that day.

He seemed pleased by the note, but somehow, I don’t feel as if this little incident is quite finished. I still believe that successful and just classrooms must be share common values, but I have to rethink how those values get taught and agreed upon. One of my students didn’t need a class promise about being supportive to stand up for me, although some of his classmates really needed the reminder. Even if the vocabulary of “respect” and “support” elude their six-year old brains, the behaviors certainly do not. Next time I try to talk about values with my students, I think I’ll start with what they value, as demonstrated by their actions.