Teachers can design, develop and begin creating an InterACTIVE classroom, but they must not overlook the importance of the personal relationships they can cultivate with students at the same time. Engagement is built on relationships, and the most important relationship in the classroom is the one between the teacher and the students. It is safe to say the influence of a teacher may be the most central and impactful thing when predicting the success of a child.
Cultivating personal relationships with students is the foundation to keeping them engaged in the InterACTIVE classroom. From this point, any achievement a student makes will continue to grow and nourish the relationship further. When you’re gifted a new class of students, you may struggle to find the time to personally get to know each student. Finding and adopting even one strategy for doing this is a step in the right direction toward positively impacting students through your individual relationship with them.
In today’s post, we are going to highlight one of our favorite strategies for nourishing student and family relationships—postcards! Sharing your thoughts and feelings is one of the easiest ways to build a relationship with your students. Sending short, sweet notes of encouragement home for students to find is one easy way to reach out and build a relationship with them.
There are two different ways you can reach out to students using postcards. First, you can use postcards to make initial contact with your students before the start of the new year. In our school, students have a special day and time where they come to find out and meet their new teacher, but if your school doesn’t, this might be a fun option. Simply send a sweet note home for students welcoming them to your class. You could even add a QR code to the note with a Flipgrid topic to try out or linking to a video of your doing a welcoming night before school read-aloud.
The other way to use postcards is yearly shoutouts. During a routine school event like Meet the Teacher or Open House, simply leave a pile of blank postcards on a table and ask students (parents can help!) to take a card and address it to themselves. Leave a small basket or bin where students can then place the addressed card and then after the event collect and store the cards together. Throughout the year, as students accomplish something they are proud of or achieve a new goal, pull out their postcard and write them a quick note of encouragement. Smack a stamp on it and mail it out!
If you would like to grab one of the designs we shared above, simply click here or the button below!
This is the message you can use on the sign placed on the table with the postcards.
If you like this idea for empowering students and making connections, check out this idea and others in our book The InterACTIVE Class!
