(Some details have been changed out of respect for my student’s privacy.)

“I didn’t think Kelley would take me.”

I had left school thirty minutes early on a Tuesday to take my ailing 17-year-old cat to the vet when my phone rang, an unhappy Georgie in the cat carrier next to me. School had ended just minutes before, and it was the paraeducator who had covered our class at the end of the day calling. I answered because there weren’t any good reasons for him to be calling instead of texting when he knew I was dealing with an emergency vet visit.

“You know our friend who was in such a bad mood this morning?”

One of our students had been particularly surly that morning. Distracted by the need to schedule an emergency trip to the vet, I hadn’t taken the time to ask him what was wrong. He’d been hostile and disrespectful. I’d responded by alternating between ignoring him and reminding him about expected classroom behavior.

“Well, apparently his day got worse. They’re going to call and ask if he can do in-school suspension with you tomorrow.”

I didn’t hesitate. “Yeah, we’ll take him, of course. Tell them to call me.” At the time I didn’t realize that I was signing on for three days of in-school suspension, but I still would have agreed to have our student with us and not out of school for three days.

This isn’t the first time that a student has served time with me rather than a more traditional discipline. Last year a student who called me a bitch was sentenced to three lunch detentions. We agreed that he would serve them in my classroom so that he could complete missing work and pull his grade up from an F. By our third lunch together, he’d caught up on his missing assignments and we’d begun to build a better relationship as student and teacher. (Full disclosure: He skipped the first several lunches and an administrator had to finally track him down, but we made progress once we got started.)

Three days of in-school suspension is a lot of time to spend with a student. I was still teaching my regular schedule of classes, so the student sat at my rarely-used teacher desk in the back of the room while my classes did their usual work. One of the conditions for in-school suspension was that he wasn’t allowed to talk to any other students, and they couldn’t talk to him. The paraeducator who was usually only with me for part of the day was with us every period so that one of us could escort our student when he needed to leave the classroom.

It was a long three days. The student respected and followed the administration’s expectations, but three days is a long time to sit in a room full of your peers while only communicating with the two adults in the room. It was a lot of time for the three of us to spend together. While I was glad that he’d been able to avoid an out-of-school suspension, the public nature of serving ISS in a classroom still troubles me.

On the other hand, a lot of trust can be built in three days. Barriers can be knocked down. Because we had two adults in the classroom for the entire time, there were multiple opportunities to take a walk around campus when he needed a break. It’s unusual as a high school teacher to have the luxury of walking and talking with a student for twenty minutes. We talked about his mood the day he got in trouble. We talked about the chickens that live near the elementary side of our campus, and he showed me the slow one that his friend had managed to catch one day.

On the third day, during my planning period, it was just the three of us in my classroom. Our student could relax, move around the room, talk out loud. I’m pretty sure he was bouncing a basketball by this point. He started talking. He told us his story.

“I didn’t think Kelley would take me,” he said.

We aren’t all best friends now. He doesn’t come and hang out before school and during lunch, and he gives the teacher desk a wide berth when he’s in my class. But he knows that there are at least two adults in the school who will take him, who will pull him closer instead of sending him away. We won’t give up on him.

Busses drop our students off starting at 8:00 a.m. for breakfast, and first period begins at 8:30 a.m. I try to be in my room after 8 for my early birds who want to drop off their bag before they eat. One day last week, a student who usually isn’t early came in well before anyone else, picked a seat, and put his head down. I’m sure I said good morning, but I probably didn’t say much else. Students who come in at 8 and put their heads down usually want that last 30 minutes of sleep.

Fast forward to midway through first period. Students are working independently on a series of research questions about an ecosystem; while I teach English, our current focus is informational reading and writing through the lens of a science topic. Since it’s first period, many students are slow getting started, but a few are asking me questions or are ready for me to check off what they’ve finished. The student who arrived first today isn’t yet working, but he’s only recently rejoined the class after being gone for a long period. He will need my help getting started since he hasn’t yet learned our strategies for reading informational text.

As I move around the room, I notice that someone’s music is extra loud, louder than the instrumental music that I have playing over the classroom speakers. Of course the students aren’t supposed to have their own music playing, but I pick my battles. I make a mental note to ask him to turn down his music after I check in with one more student.

It’s at this moment that another student, a young man at the opposite corner of the classroom, hears the music and looks around to see whose it is. He gets up and walks across the room to the student with the loud music, the same student who was the first to come into my room. He asks him a question then pulls over a chair. He leans over and wraps the student in his arms. It’s only then that I realize that the music was hiding the fact that the student was sobbing.

If you’d asked me a week ago, I wouldn’t have said that the two boys were particular friends. And while I like them both a great deal, I wouldn’t have said that either was particularly sensitive or nurturing. I certainly didn’t expect one to cross the room and wrap his arms around the other.

I called a friend and colleague who is close to the student to make sure that she was in her office, and I wrote the two boys a pass. The second boy returned after a few minutes and put his head down. When I checked on the first boy in my colleague’s office, he was smiling, laughing, coloring a picture. When he asked for a restroom pass, my friend filled me in on what was going on. To say it’s a crappy situation is an understatement. It sucks.

I try to watch my students more closely. I ask them how they’re doing, and I make sure to listen to their answers. I tell them I’m glad they’re here. I tell they’re loved, they’re strong, they’re brave, they’re resilient. I tell them I’ll see them tomorrow.

And I hope, that just like the observant young man in first period, that they will continue to look out for each other.

One of my students sometimes asks me why I’m so nice.

I don’t actually think of myself as particularly nice. I’m impatient. I’m judgemental. I’m an introvert who mostly wants to be left alone. Sometimes I want to scowl when students ask me for a Band-Aid. Again.

I try not to let that show with students. “Infinite patience” is my counsel when anyone asks how I do what I do. I can go almost the entire school day telling students where the pencils are, providing snacks, picking books up off the floor, before I snap.

Many of our students don’t get a lot of kindness. The world is filled with snark. Negativity is cool. Kids tease each other, but they’re often tone deaf about it. “I’m just joking,” they say, but their friend isn’t in on the joke.

My students in Chicago loved to play hide the lunch. A girl would get up to get a napkin or a milk, and the other girls would hide something from her lunch. They’d laugh. They thought they were hilarious. They didn’t think they were being mean, but no one should have to return to a table where everyone is laughing at them.

My current school is conducting a Kindness campaign. Students and staff track their kindness every day and turn in their tallies at the end of the day. “How do you count kindness?” the high schoolers ask. “You count it all,” we respond, “every greeting, every class arrived at on time, every door held.” You count it until it’s habit and you forget that you’re doing it.

At a recent meeting about behavior, one of our leaders said that “Students should not refuse a reasonable request from an adult.” I think it’s a good way to put it, and it’s been pretty effective with my students when I remember to use it. If a school staff member makes a reasonable request of a student, the student should not refuse. That’s respect that most schools expect students to give to adults.

But what about the reverse? Do we always treat our students with respect? Do we respect their privacy and their boundaries? Do we ask them for hall passes with respect? Do we greet their return from an absence with respect? Do we treat their stories with respect when we talk about them with outsiders?

I don’t know how to write about this. Last week I learned that a little boy who I had known since he was a baby had died at age twenty-five. He was probably in elementary school the last time I saw him, but I was babysitting his older siblings when he was born. When I went away to college, he would wake from his nap and call “Hi Lea!” out the window of his bedroom to my parents’ house across the street. He’ll always be that little boy to me.

The day after I found out that he died, I started writing on the tables daily. I don’t know how else to convey to my students how wonderful they are, how impressive and challenging and creative and important, how much their lives matter, how devastated we all would be if they were gone. They deserve love. They are loved.

I usually write this on the announcements that I post on Monday mornings. For the past two Mondays, I’ve written it on their tables.

Mondays are rough. Our students have terrible weekend sleep habits. Some report that they haven’t slept at all before arriving at school; others have maybe only slept on the bus.

Sometimes I’m annoyed that students have been absent. I wish their cell phones and headphones were already put away. I don’t like that they respond to my greeting with a snarl. But I’m still glad that they’re there, in class, every Monday, even if they won’t smile at me until the end of the day.

Be kind to yourself.

I’m going to write this on their tables this morning. I saw it in a magazine this weekend, though I can’t find the reference now.

You deserve kindness. Be kind to yourself.

Last year I had Christmas dinner alone. I had planned to eat Christmas dinner with my mom, but she woke up with the flu that morning.

I’m a teacher. I definitely didn’t want the flu over winter vacation. I took her some meds and got out of there as quickly as possible.

I briefly felt sorry for myself. Everyone else already had plans or was out of town. I didn’t even know what to feed myself for dinner.

After about a minute, I remembered a recipe that I’d seen online that I wanted to make. I remembered that the Safeway near my mom’s house was open on Christmas Day. I remembered that I’m an introvert. Christmas dinner alone was not a big deal.

I think that sometimes when we think about the holidays, we think that the worst that can happen is that someone won’t have many family and friends around. We warn children to remember that their classmates might not get as many presents as they do. We get caught up in “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays” and which songs are okay for the winter concert.

For many of our students, the holidays aren’t the happiest time of the year. For some, they’re the worst.

It’s not just about being sensitive because someone else might have less money. It’s not just about keeping church and state separate.

We have students who don’t live with their parents for good reason, but might have to see them at a holiday gathering. We have students whose families will drink far too much at their celebrations. We have students with parents incarcerated, or serving overseas, or lost to addiction, or just gone. Our LGBT students might have to hide their true selves around their families. Our student might be giving their meals to a younger sibling because there isn’t enough to eat, or sleeping on the floor in that sibling’s bedroom to keep them safe during a holiday party. They might be hiding bruises from extended family to protect their abusers.

I’ve written before that we don’t actually have to know our students’ stories to help them. They don’t have to reveal their secrets to us.

Instead, we need to remember that all of our students have stories, and treat them as such. Assume that holidays are hard and make your classroom a place of safety and predictability. Don’t add more stress to their lives.

It’s a busy time of year. As teachers, we’re trying to cram a unit in between two holidays. We don’t want to leave something unfinished over a two-week vacation. High school teachers know that the end of the semester is coming.

Stop. Slow down. Connect. Take the extra ten seconds to ask a student how it’s going. Take another ten seconds to ask the next student how it’s going.

I set three goals for December this year: relationships, engaged reading, and strategies for rigorous texts. Will it be better if we finish the whole book before vacation? Sure, but there’s a reason that I put relationships first on that list. The needs of the student are more important than my need to finish the chapter.

Our students won’t come and tell us that the holidays are hard. Some won’t even know it themselves. But we know, and so we must be extra kind and safe and predictable and wise.

Take a deep breath.

Take another one.

You got this.

Way back on August 22, educator Steve Kukic spoke to our faculty during our August Professional Development. I have a few pages of notes from his day with us, but one particular set of information has guided my thinking about my work with students these last few weeks. (I’m basing this on my own incomplete notes, so any mistakes are mine.)

Quoting from the study Vulnerable But Invincible: High Risk Children from Birth to Adulthood, Kukic cited three factors for the resilient kids who succeeded despite the roadblocks in their way:

1. High expectations from home, school, or community,

2. Future orientation (not focused on past or now), and

3. “Unconditional positive regard” from an adult.

Reading conferences are often tough during the first few weeks of school, especially with students who are new-to-you. You feel like you’ve recommended the same book twenty times. A new English teacher lamented the number of times she’s asked “What’s your favorite movie or video game?” when students say “I don’t read” when she’s helping them find books.

When this has happened to me this year, especially with juniors and seniors, I’ve asked what they want to do after high school. A counselor I worked with used to mention how surprised she was that no one ever asked students what they want to do after high school. Many students have tough and even horrible pasts and presents, pasts and presents that are utterly beyond their control. The future, however, can be within their control, and we can help them with that.

This year, a student told me he might want to join the military, and when I asked him what he would want to do there, he said he didn’t know. He thought that flying sounded cool after I listed all the things that one could do in the military. Since my brother is a pilot, I then told him every possible thing that I know about learning to fly airplanes. Did my student run out and sign up for flying lessons? Of course not. Does he now realize that flying is actually something that ordinary people can do? That he can sign up and take lessons and learn to fly before he graduates from high school? He knows all that now. The more interest we show in our students’ futures, the more likely they are to turn their focus in that direction.

I’m still thinking about how high expectations play out in my classroom. I don’t think it means academic rigor, or strict expectations for classroom behavior, or inflexible grading policies. High expectations isn’t “We all must read William Faulkner together” when 40% of the class is still working on decoding and academic language.

I think that when it comes to high expectations, what we really need to communicate to students is a high level of belief. It is not that I expect you to read at this level; instead, I believe that you can read at this level. I believe that you can write this narrative. I believe that you can pass Algebra.

I believe in you.

In a meeting this year, someone said “But he can’t—” and one of our instructional leaders interrupted with “He can’t yet.” An English colleague repeated it later, and I remind myself to remember the power of yet. He can’t read that yet. She can’t do that yet. But I believe that my students will do it. It’s not that he can’t read single and double consonant words, it’s that he can’t read them yet. Even better: “He is working on single and double consonant words.” You can learn to do this, I say to my students, and I know that it is true.

And, of course, we work to practice unconditional positive regard every day. On this blog a few weeks ago, Angie Huesgen wrote “Be damn nice to kids. All of them. Every single day.” This isn’t as obvious as you think. “Don’t smile until Christmas,” people say. “You’ve got to be tough, make them respect you,” others might add.

But I agree with Angie. Be nice, damn nice, every day. Even to the mean kids and the kids who ignore you. You might say hi twenty times before students respond, but they do notice when you say hi.

At my school the secondary teachers supervise buses loading while our elementary colleagues walk the little ones to their buses. A lot of the time this means walking around while students work hard to talk to anyone but a teacher. I know from personal experience that walking around saying “Get on your bus, get on you bus” does not work. So last year I started saying “See you tomorrow” if I didn’t know a student. If I knew their name, I said “Good-bye” and their name and that I would see them tomorrow. That works better.

We then stand by our stadium and wave at the buses as they pull out, all twenty-four of them. The little kids wave and shout good-bye, smiles huge. The high schoolers ignore us, and sometimes they even give us a school-inappropriate finger.

But they know we’re there.

And they know that we’ll be there tomorrow.