Helping Hands

As the students continue to complete the hands and focus on making our classroom a better place for all the students and the school; I am so proud of the progress I am observing with the students.  

However, my students  discussed being in the sixth grade you have to endure hearing the phrases:

 " you are the big kids of the school"

 "all eyes are upon you"

 "you need to act like 6th grade students"

"you know the little kids look up to you" 

They do not appreciate all of these phrases.  The complained that is these phrases are all they hear from the faculty. They said sometimes they just wanted to be appreciated for who they are and what they do. I am just as guilty for saying this to my students.  The truth is they are acting like 6th grade students;  which just may not be exactly how we want them to act at the time. So I took some time to ask the students how these comments make them feel and what should be done to make these statements realistic and encouraging.

As we had our informal group discussion, the students expressed their feelings of the comments as being:

"Too much pressure"

"It's not like we are the teachers or anything"

"Why does everyone have to look at us?"

"Who do we have to look to?"

So we worked on how could we make this work for everyone!  The students decided they would accept the role of being the oldest in the school. They accepted the challenge of being role models for the younger students.  So in order for them to feel some affirmation; I arranged for the to have some privileges only the 6th grade students could have. For example more computer time on Friday afternoons, opportunities for earn "double tickets" for their hard work. Also, I spoke with the lower grade teachers, we decided the pair up the younger students with the older students so they could help each other.

Therefore, I am adding one extra week of the "helping hands" project the "buddy pairs" will make hands together and discuss how they have helped each other for that week. My sixth grade students have discovered  one valuable lesson from the younger students... it is okay to be silly sometimes and not always having to be so "COOL!" or as my students say today, "CLEAN!"

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