Friendships

I recently heard a story about a nine-year-old boy who was diagnosed with cancer. He was given a pretty good prognosis although it would require radiation and chemotherapy. He was so upset about the treatment and the fact that he would be losing his hair. He was nervous about going back to school completely bald. On the Saturday before he was to return to school all the boys in his class came over and held a head shaving party. All the boys in his class shaved their heads so that this one young man would not feel bad about himself returning to school. One of the boys that shaved his head was Brian. Brian, up until that point of his 9-year life, had always worn his hair really long. The reason he did this was because he had unusually large ears that protruded from his head. Wearing his hair long hide his large ears and gave him confidence knowing that the chances of ridicule were lessened. Yet, on the day of the head shaving party, Brian didn’t think twice about shaving his hair all off. He was willing to feel more self-conscience about the way he looked in order to help his friend feel less self-conscience about the way he looked and more included. What a wonderful friend?

The story, while making me cry, made me think about friendships within our classroom. This past weekend I was so excited about the prom at our high school. I loved taking pictures for friends and I adored watching the girls in their beautiful dresses and the young men looking so adorably handsome and so grown up in their tuxes. Yet, what I enjoyed more than anything was watching the friendships between the students. One of the mantras of my church is “you can’t do life alone.” Our church is headstrong in helping everyone find a place in the church so that everyone feels included, but that they also grow together.

Friendships are important. Being lonely is hard. Not just for students but for adults. We talk nonstop about collaboration and communication on your teams, but do we talk enough about fostering that collaboration and communication within your classrooms. I know that some students are harder to like than others. Some students don’t do themselves any favors in making friends. Some students are incredibly shy. Some students are socially awkward. Some students could be best friends with anyone including you. Some students bring schema that include fear, prejudices, exclusion, and/or rejection. This makes your job even harder. But most things worth doing are hard (i.e. exercise…. still trying to convince myself).

I could provide you with hundreds of articles describing how to develop friendships with peers, but the best way to build friendships within your classroom is by modeling. Modeling is the number one friend of a teacher. We should model everything from TDA to math computation, but we also model friendship skills. We model by how we talk to our students, the words we use with our students, how we respond when they’re upset, our treatment when they’re not making good decisions, or the ways we celebrate with them on minor and major accomplishments. DuBois once said, “children learn more from who you are than what you teach.” As my teenagers would say #truth.  Think about your work on a team. You can get so much accomplished when everyone works together-your classroom is no different. The friendships matter for the content you teach, but it matters for the humans you teach as well.