Yesterday, I had a not so great interaction with a student, which left me feeling really bad and it ended up consuming my entire night-yes, I woke up at 2 a.m. thinking about this kid. Why? Oh, why do we have to care so much? Anyway, every year I inevitably have a couple interactions with students that I wish could have gone better, which is par for the course when you work with people, especially teenagers. Many years ago, I realized one way to counteract the way these unfortunate interactions make me feel is to write positive emails to parents of students with which I’ve had great interactions. Fortunately, these positive interactions way out number the negative ones, like by 1000%! Here is a sampling of a few emails I sent this morning:
Dear Mr. and Mrs __________,
Good morning! I’m writing just to let you know that it has been an absolute pleasure working with _________ this year. He is a great kid! _________ is a joy to be around; he always listens attentively and consistently contributes to our classroom community. I am so happy that he is in my class!
Have a wonderful day and God bless!
Sincerely,
Mrs. Cutright
Dear Mr. and Mrs. ___________,
I just want to send a quick note to acknowledge what a great kid you have. I am ________’s English teacher this year, and I feel very lucky to have her in my class. I went to England with ____________ a couple of summers ago and I see how she positively influenced her peers during that trip. I get to see another side of her in the classroom. ___________ is hard-working and interested in learning. She really is a joy to be around!
I hope you have a wonderful day.
Sincerely,
Mrs. Cutright
When the time is right, I am going to revisit the conversation I had with the student of yesterday and try again. In the meantime, I do feel better. What do you do when you have a not so awesome interaction with another human?
I love these positive emails! I occasionally write them as well, but I find that I have so many other things and negative emails to write that the positive ones are not high on my priority list, and they should be. Thank you for the reminder.
We've all been there 🙁
I write these once in a while too and they make everyone feel better! I love that you did this. Such a good way to communicate and pay some "positivity karma" forward.
Fantastic! I'm inspired.
I'm really glad that you wrote this blog. It's a good reminder about how valuable these emails are, and that they should be a priority for all of us. Moreover, focusing on how many positive interactions we have through the course of a day is a great reminder of how fulfilling this work is. Also a positive email sent home can go a long way towards making a student buy into you as a teacher and what you teach in your class.
Everyone needs a little good PR. Did you get any replies from parents?
I got a reply from 4 out of 5 families, and they were all grateful. I'm adding this into my weekly rotation.
This is a very special thing to do for a student, Kate! Communicating with families is one thing I have not had practice with, besides relaying unfortunate information, so to make a twist on a parent email to be positive is a game-changer! Knowing me though, I would overthink it and feel bad if I "missed' someone or if a student called me out for not writing an email about them. That might just be me though 🙂
I'm going to try and do this once a week. I want to get to as many students as possible by the end.
I love this post – thanks for the inspiration!
Great post… I love the fact that you focus both on how great it is for the parent/student but also that the act of writing the emails actually also gave you a boost and helped you focus on the positive. Human interactions are EXHAUSTING and talking parents off the ledge or having those hard conversations are probably the most taxing part of our jobs…
I wish I could say that I was great at proactively reaching out to give parents good news… I was/am not… I do know that the few times I did to a parent whose kids does not typically get positive reinforcement (like acknowledging any improvement or sign of effort), it has been a game changer…
I find that when students are cooperative, listen, and are working hard I try to acknowledge their efforts directly to the students. The students respond very well to positive feedback. Also if I have to write a parent because a student is having academic difficulty I always try to include a positive comment about the student.
I love the happy emails home! I try and send a few each week. It's so easy to place this to the bottom of my never ending to do list but I think they are so important.
Love that you do this! It's hard to make time to give the positive feedback, but means so much to the student, parents, you, and the community that you are building.
Thanks Kate. Negative interactions are a part of everyday life. I think the best we can do is to have the conversations and be open and honest. So much worry and anxiety goes into thinking about difficult conversations or negative interactions, similar to how we worry about potentially negative meetings with parents, and 98% of the time they turn out just fine, or better than we could have imagined. I think that when the negative interaction happens, it's best to reach out to talk about it; otherwise it festers or is made to be a bigger deal than it actually is. I can't tell you how many times someone has come to my office with a concern or problem and the act or reaching out to communicate, either with me or with the person who is part of the problem, solves the problem or at least clears the air and allows both parties to move forward.
When we were talking with corporate excecs when researching desgin ideas for the Innovation Center we were told, repeatedly, that group dynamics and project management skills were the number one need in the workplace today-we don't know how to have conversations about difficult subjects; the only way to get better is to actually have the conversation.