Day 54- Tell Someone I'm Proud of Them

Day 54- Tell Someone I'm Proud of Them.

When I came up with this idea, I had one student in mind. It was a former student who went off to high school. I had always been worried about him and I every time I talk to a high school teacher I ask about him. I kept getting the same feedback. "He's doing great!" Every time, that totally made my day. I e-mailed his guidance counclier to see if I could come into school and tell him in person how proud I was of him. I wanted say it in front of the guiance councler so there was another adult present. The guidance councler never e-mailed me back. I'll try again.


However, I wanted to do something else not for that one student but for my students. I wanted to say something nice to every one of them. And I will. But with the snow and assessment and a major project looming I don't know if I will have time before the deadline.

But Friday the 19 was my last day of drama club- we put on a play and we raised $625 for charity. Cindy worked with the charity and the back stage kids. I worked with the actors.

Event:
Just before show time I had everyone line up in their spots and I said something nice about every single student. There were 24 actors and 3 backstage kids.

Each comment was made for that child, ranging from, "I hope my daughter grows up to be just like you" to "I can't wait to see you act as an 8th grader because you're amazing."

Reaction:
Kids are hard to read, some I think were a little embarrassed because an adult was saying something nice to them. Some kids looked like they were going to cry. Every kid had the same excited look in their eyes when I walked in front of them to say my nice thing.

Drama club kids are different from my normal classes. They WANT to be there. Most of them I don't teach or will never teach. The day of the play will be the last time I see them.

This year was very hard between the snow and swine flu, we had 23 kids drop out. Yep we had a total of 45 kids try out and get parts. 23 dropped out. I'm not sure why there was such a high turn over.
But I wanted EVERY kid who stuck it out to know I was proud of them and not in some blanket general statement I say to everyone.

Would I do this again? I will be doing this again. You'll see a similar post later.
Cost: None
Efforts: it was a lot of rapid firing from my brain
Time: 5 minutes.