Speaker 1: At some point, every teacher has a kid like this in class. If our goal as educators is to help every single child succeed, the question becomes, how do we help kids that, at least by appearance, want to be anywhere else but in your classroom? Today, I want to share with you four tips that I guarantee help you help those students. But before we get started, I want to thank our sponsor, OrCam Learn, for sponsoring this video. Let's go. Now, my first go-to here, something I go to all the time, but for good reason, it is building relationships with students. If we don't know who's in our classroom, how are we supposed to address anything in our classroom, really? And there's a saying, and I'm going to forget who said it, but kids don't care what you know until they know that you care. And this doesn't have to be an overwhelming amount of relationship. So I realize that some people are very uncomfortable with this idea, but what I'm talking about here is not like being buddies with someone. I'm talking about building authentic connection, knowing who the people are that are in front of you. And so that when you know that, then you can address all kinds of things. I have a whole video on this already. I'm going to link it in the description below, and I'll put in one of these cards up here that you can check out. And it's how I build relationships and why I think building relationships is incredibly important. But before you go watch that video, I want to tell you these few things. One is that sometimes kids are acting a certain way in class because they have hurt that is not being dealt with. It is not our job as educators always to fix that hurt or even directly address that hurt. But when we find out that a student is hurting, we can get them in connection, get their parents and guardians in connection with people that are going to be able to do that. As teachers, our time is limited. So you can't do the job of a therapist, and you might not even be qualified to do that kind of work. But finding out what's going on with the student and then connecting them with the right resources is part of our job. Sometimes also in building relationships, you're going to find that you realize that a kid has undiagnosed disabilities or learning differences. And once those are uncovered, again, you can connect them to the right resources, to the right people in the building and start helping students in ways that you can do in partnership with your school to help them to move forward. Because, look, if a kid has a hearing disability, a processing disability, dyslexia, or any number of other things, dysgraphia, they are not going to be able to do the work which just makes you feel like crap. And then you just want to put your head down, not do anything because this isn't going to work anyway. My second point is kind of there's half and half point here. When you get to know these students, you're going to be able to do one of these two things. One is push a little bit. When you know who a kid is and what's going on, if you build that relationship, you know which students you can push, you know which kids you can cajole into doing something, get a little bit more out of them. It is not forceful, but it is a far more direct push that kids can see. But this is going to become part of building the relationship piece. If you don't know your students, you can't just teach everyone the same. You can't treat everyone the same. Fair is not equal. If you see that a student is not the kind that you can push, and the second thing you're going to do is find the right on-ramp for a student. So what do I mean by this? I'm talking about finding a job in class that is going to allow that student to participate, say, during a game. You're doing a review activity as a game or something in class, and this student is like, they are selective mute, they have hearing disability, they have a processing speed that's not as quick as everyone else, and so they're just not going to be able to win in a timed game. You can either shift the parameters of that game so you're really thinking about how we make this equal and how do we make this fair for everyone, or you give that student a different job. They are the scorekeeper. They are the one that is checking for right answers. But they're doing something that's allowing them to engage, allowing them to be an active participant in the review. They're still interacting with what's happening, but you're finding a way that is far more comfortable for them, and then this grows over time. Not talking about dumbing things down, not talking about making things just easier for kids. I'm talking about meeting kids where they are so we can bring them up to where they need to be. Another right on-ramp might be the right kind of project, right? Think and try different projects that might be more in the wheelhouse of something that a student's already good at. So if you are building creations out of Legos, something out of clay, you're creating something where students are allowed to film things and make like a little docu-series, you're thinking outside the box along the lines of something that might be far more interesting to a student or that they might already feel that they have a giftedness towards, and that's going to allow them to participate so much easier and get really good feedback from yourself, from the other students, building that self-confidence and helping them to move forward in the class this year. Once you get to know your students' specific needs, it's important to connect them with the right tools and resources to help them succeed at the highest levels in your classroom and at home. OrCam Learn is a brilliant handheld device that was developed to help students with reading and learning challenges, including dyslexia. With a simple point and click operation, students can access any text, digital or printed. Teachers, how many of you have students that have all the resources and tools and help that they need while in school? They have caring teachers, paraprofessionals, access to resources and technology. The question becomes, what happens when they go home? How do we expect our students to become lifelong learners and readers without making sure that they are equipped with the tools that they need when they need them? With OrCam Learn, we are equipping students with the help that they need to level the playing field. OrCam Learn's intuitive web and mobile apps even deliver instant and comprehensive reports of your students' progress, whether they're in school or at home, which helps teachers, parents and guardians see where students need help the most. To find out more about how you can help your students gain back their dignity, their self-confidence and allow them to grow into who they are meant to become with the OrCam Learn. Third tip, assemble the Avengers. What does this mean? It means no man is an island, right? This idea that we as teachers are not the only ones. You are not the sole helper or savior in a student's life. What you need to be doing is working together as a team to come together to help children. And when I say team, I mean like your grade level or the SPED department, the dean of students or just other teachers that you know interact with the student on a daily basis. The first thing that my team and I do is we come up with a pain plan. So you identify a student that has needs. Maybe that student suffers from anxiety, maybe they have a short attention span or they really struggle when it comes to rules and they have like just moments where they might need a break. You team up with people and you come up with a plan. Does that student need to get water? Do they have a place that they can go to if they're kind of like having a freak out moment? Do they have somewhere they can go for help? Do they have somewhere they can go to get quiet? There's a plan in place for that student. We're not talking about all students, right? We're talking about those few kids that really might need a little bit extra. Maybe there's someone that you can text them and they come to class when the student's having a particularly difficult day because the student suffers with a high level of depression and won't pick their head up from a desk. That teacher knows to come in, they address the student, they take them out, they find out what's going on and then they can bring them back to class. This is not about excluding a kid from class or not letting them get the education that they need, but if you can't meet those base needs, no one's learning the rest of what we're doing today anyway. So it's better to create that pain plan and have it in place so that you all know what to do when a student needs that extra help. Before I move on to my last tip, I want to make it very clear that students that are going through something that is overwhelming to them, to you, it is quite obvious to the rest of the class many times, you want to make sure that you do not give all of your energy to that situation and it can be difficult to turn that off. I made a video about kids one, two, and three. I'm going to link that in the description today as well, but it talks about this idea of there's three different types of students, but if we give that the student types of students that we're talking about right now and give them all of our time and energy, then it's excluding other kids. It's taking time and energy away from students that also need our time and energy. And my last point is contact home, but not to tell, to report, and to get help. Part of building relationships, part of getting to know kids, part of building a pain plan, part of assembling the Avengers has to include parents and guardians, as long as those parents and guardians are willing. I realize that there are some folks that are not interested or willing to do this, but if it's there, it's better to ask and find out than to just think that no one cares at home, right? So really, emailing home, not calling, emailing home, because this gives parents and children a time to process, it gives them a chance to read it to their student, it gives them a chance to answer it on their own time, and it serves as documentation. A phone call does not, you cannot, unless you're recording the phone call, which is super weird, then emailing is the best way. You're reporting what you're seeing in class and then asking what has worked in the past to help serve your students so that they could find success in class. And you will be mind-blown that one, parents don't even know what to say at the time, there's no teachers ever called to find out, to ask them like they're an actual expert on their student. Contacting home is the best way. And then when you get that feedback, make sure you're sharing that with your team as well, right? We want to make sure that this is something that we are communicating to our teams, that we can even CC the team on, or BCC the team on, so that everyone is in the know. I would really encourage you to check out the building relationships video that is linked below, and the kids one, two, and three, it is, it was a game changer for me, that was taught to me by one of my mentors, and it has, it changed, it changed everything for me in the classroom. Thank you so much to our sponsor, OrCamLearn, you can find all of their information below, literally the best piece of technology that I've ever used in the classroom. That's it gang, peace.