All my teacher friends will relate to this.
Each day the children are dropped off at the classroom door where they say goodbye to their parents, and they’re all yours.
It is in that split moment that each and every teacher takes a quick look into the eyes of the child as you say good morning and you make an assumption of how the child is feeling and what kind of day you’re going to have.
Immediately in your head you estimate what’s been happening at home since you handed them over yesterday. Are they in trouble at home? Did they stay up too late? Were they sick? Is mummy going away for business and it’s upsetting? The possibilities are endless and we are not trained psychologists or mind readers.
As a good teacher you will never ignore that intuition. You and the classroom might be the only thing that’s constant in the child’s life.
You must make sure that your room, your school and yourself are the safe haven that every child needs. No matter how bad things are outside of school, your classroom will always be a place of educational safety.
A mother once said this to me “My daughter used to pretend she was sick so she didn’t have to come to school, now when she’s sick she pretends she’s not, so I’ll take her to school.”
That’s when I knew I was doing things right! ❤️
