Sept 10 Exit Slip

 

One of the quotes / idea that stuck with me was "Be open to students about ourselves." I wholeheartedly agree with this take, since I personally have benefitted from this before. I believe teachers should be sharing things related to us to students, within a level that we are comfortable with. It helps us build connections to students that have similar interests, and even those that do not since they could now be interested / comfortable with sharing their interests with us once we open up ourselves. Two years ago, I was assigned a student who was very shy, and he had a lot of problems interacting with other teachers due to his shyness. He was coming for two hour sessions every Thursday with me, and I gave him a 10 minute break during the hour transition to relax. During those breaks, I noticed that he would always look up Minecraft mod tutorials. Since I also played Minecraft, I though we could have some common language together. Since then, during our breaks, I would talk to him about my experiences playing Minecraft, and he would sometimes teach me things that he knows. From these interactions, he eventually warmed up to me, and most of the problems other teachers had (not listening to instructions, talking back, etc...) just disappeared. We spent a year together doing programming problems and talking about Minecraft. Eventually, when he attempted the same programming contest he did prior being in my class, his grade bumped from 15/75 to 56/75. He was happy, and his parents gave me some great feedback, which made me happy!