I've been meaning to write for a few weeks now, but every time I was going to something came up. Not a good excuse, really, but just what happened.
Relationships (with students, with other teachers and with friends, etc.) have not been my strong point lately. A lot of this boils down to who I am, what I've gone through and the situation I'm in (or more accurately, the situations). This is not me making excuses, this is me trying to figure out what's going wrong and moving forward to get better at these things.
Unfortunately, I've never been able to easily get along with people. Well, at least my peers. When I started teaching, I found myself more comfortable working with children and relating to them and their needs. Somewhere in between Korea, and Tanzania and England and here, I've lost some of that. Not all of it, but some of it.
I guess I should start with my relationships with my students, since that is the most relevant (well, ok, that's definitely up for debate at the moment) to my actual teaching performance. I've been having some tough times with a couple of the boys in my class. Many of these boys have some pretty rough home lives (the full details of which I only just found out recently, though I did have a good idea of what was going on with them). I think I just got to a point where I didn't really know what kind of relationship I needed to have with my students. In the past, I've thought I understood my children really well. But that wasn't South Auckland. Those kids I used to teach didn't need as close a bond to succeed. When relationships were stressed, I saw one idea of relationships, but others had a different idea in their mind. No one figured out the disconnect until recently. That being said, I think I get it now. I've talked to a few teachers and in these last few weeks have really tried to make a push to build better relationships with my students. I still find it hard, as I don't really know when to push them and when to pull back. How does one know what their limits are unless you test them? And with kids like these, is it wise to test them? At what point do you have to take the "I hate you"s for not letting them have extra privileges? I guess the way forward is to look at these things, but also to start the new school year by getting to know the children and letting them know that I'm human as well, and that I make mistakes, but at the end of the day, I do care about them.
Relationships with staff is also something I really want to get good at. My biggest issue goes way back. Probably all the way to grade 3 or even 2. That's a long way. I just have had problems with peers, though not really these days. It's more the years of being alone that have made me shy to breaking into already established groups. I'm not one (at least at the moment - there was a brief period about 10 years ago when I was full of confidence) to immediately start talking to a group of strangers. I like talking to people one on one. That's just how I am. I've let that fear isolate me a bit at my school. Which has not been good, because I really actually get along with all of my coworkers, and they have a lot they can offer me in terms of help (and even with my shyness, I have still managed to get lots of ideas). Next year, I've already spoken with some of my team members about planning together. I really enjoyed doing that in the past, and found that if you put a few people with different strengths into the same room, you'll get amazing things (and I'm not talking about sharing planning - I do that a good amount). I've already made some efforts lately to work on this and I'm finding it's not as scary as I thought.
Relationships outside of work. Wow. This goes up and down a lot. I've just not got that support network that most people have. That's going to be one of the things that keeps me afloat, and it's not as good as I would like. I've actually made a few friends here, but who knows if they'll last (the best one moved away overseas four weeks after I met her... that has been difficult - though I'll see her again in a few weeks when I go visit). I need to keep trying that because it can be an awfully sad and lonely place to be alone. I think this has possibly affected my ability to form other relationships in school and I really do need to just sort those things out.
So that's something to work on I think. In all aspects of my life. I think the best thing I can keep doing is asking people how they make it work and trying new things.
