Connecting with my kids

So, here is a story that I don't think I will ever forget. 

It is cool to be the observer again in the other classes. Now that I know the kids and get to watch them learn from the back of the classroom again, I am seeing a lot more that I did not see before. There is this one little boy in one of my classes who just says the worst things about himself. He will crumple up his paper and write f+ all over it...it is really sad. The first time I saw him doing it when I was the teacher I brought him to a separate table and made him start over on a new sheet of paper...he then told me how stupid and worthless he was and I literally got down on my knees on his level and told him that he was good and smart and that I did not want him to write F+ on his paper anymore. He still did it for about 3 weeks on EVERYTHING. I talked to his homeroom teacher, his parents, my CT...NOTHING really helped. Then, on Wednesday last week, I saw him crawling under the table while my CT was helping another student, so I went over to him and told him to get up. He does this thing where he pokes out his bottom lip when he is feeling bad about himself, so instead of telling him to stop writing f+ all over his paper I decided to chat with him. 

I said "Hey, what do you wanna be when you grow up?" (We are learning about occupations and his homeroom teacher told me he looooves airplanes. My boyfriend is an aerospace engineer, so I thought he might like to hear that I know someone who designs planes.) He responded, "Well, I don't really know." So I said "I heard you really like airplanes. Guess what? My friend builds airplanes!" After I said that he literally got the brightest smile on his face. He then told me, "I know what I want to be when I grow up." I said, "And what is that?" He told me "A tour guide of Machu Picchu!!"

  --Just to preface this, we learned about Machu Picchu about a month ago and the kids literally ALWAYS talk about it. I showed them a photo of me in front of Machu Picchu from this summer and they are so obsessed with it. It is so awesome how much they remember from that one lesson.--

Anyway, so of course my heart just melted when this little 7 year old tells me he wants to move to Peru and become a tour guide at Machu Picchu. I say, "You know what...I think that is a great idea, but you know what you are going to need if you are going to be a tour guide in Machu Picchu?" He responds, "What?" So I say, "You are going to need to learn Spanish! And if you are going to learn Spanish then you need to be at your desk doing your Spanish work...not crawling under the table, dont you think you would learn a lot more Spanish by doing your work?" He said, "Well, yeah!" So I said to him, "You are a very smart kid" and I left it at that so that I could finish circulating the room with my CT and making sure the other kids were ok. When I got back around to him, he pokes me in the leg and points at his f+'s on his paper. 

He had crossed them all out.

For 3 weeks I literally would have to tell him every day to stop writing that on his paper. To stop crumpling up his paper and hiding under the desk. And now he had not only crossed them out, but had completed the whole worksheet correctly and was so proud of himself that he wanted to show me. The class had ended and I took up his paper so that he could line up, but I was holding back the tears because somehow I got through to that little boy and he felt good about himself for once. It was a really great feeling and I learned that instead of always telling the kids what to do, I need to connect with them. It made me realize that getting on their level is SO important and if anyone is going to listen to me, I need to listen to them first.