The Key to Better Attendance? Know Your Students
Surprisingly Simple Ways To Support Belonging and Attendance Series: Part 5
We spend a lot of time trying to figure out what our students need to be successful at school.
What if we just asked them?
What helps you learn? What makes school hard? What are you good at? What do you wish your teachers knew about you?
Oftentimes our students have information that could help us support their success, strengthen their connection to school, and even understand what might make them want to be there.
And getting that information can be surprisingly simple.
Ask Them!
Letters, interviews, surveys, and drawings can all help us learn more about our students.
Here are a few questions to get the conversation started:
What is something you would like me to know about you?
Tell me about the people you live with.
What helps you learn best?
What are you good at? What's hard for you?
We can also ask about their favorites: music, snacks, sports, hobbies, or whatever else might help us make a personal connection.
But gathering the information is only the first step. What matters is what we do with it!
What about creating a class playlist with everyone's favorite school-appropriate song?
Fair warning: You will likely discover that your students have wildly different definitions of good music.
Infuse students' interests into our examples, reading selections, and writing prompts.
Use what we learn to make instruction more responsive. Give students time to process, remove barriers to learning, and adjust our approach based on what they tell us they need.
And don't overlook the information we already have.
If a student has an IEP or 504 plan, read it! At the very least, start by familiarizing yourself with their accommodations, then make sure you understand and implement the supports outlined in the full plan.
Knowing our students means understanding what they need to be successful, too.
Dear Teacher
When Tiffany taught university students, she used a simple activity that was incredibly informative.
She showed students this Dear Teacher video and then asked them to write their own Dear Teacher letter.
The assignment? Write anywhere from one paragraph to one page telling her about themselves as learners.
Students shared mental health challenges, learning preferences, and important background information that she might never have known otherwise.
And what surprised her most was how forthcoming students were when she simply asked.
Tiffany found herself returning to those letters time and time again. Especially before meeting with students, when work was late, or when she noticed something was off.
So often, those letters helped fill in the blanks, giving her information she needed to better support her students.
We encourage teachers of older students to try this activity, too.
Keep the Conversation Going
When we ask students to write to us, we write back!
Make connections to their interests, acknowledge what they've told us, and let them know we're paying attention.
We can also keep asking for feedback throughout the year.
What's working for students? What could we do differently?
And when students share their thoughts, let's tell them how we're using their feedback.
Because getting to know our students isn't a beginning-of-the-year activity. It's an ongoing practice.
This week, ask your students something you genuinely want to know. Then find a way to use what you learn.
The more our students feel known, the more they feel like coming to school.
Next week, we'll explore surprisingly simple ways to celebrate our students and remind them just how much they matter.
Want to go deeper?
We recently hosted our training Escape the Behavior Trap, where we break down why traditional responses don’t work - and what to do instead.
