Have you heard of the game called “You Impress Me”? Neither had I until I made it up this morning!
Shhhh. Please don’t tell my students, but if I call anything a “game”, they think it’s way more fun than it really is. ; )
When’s the last time someone said they were “impressed” by you? I can’t remember the last time someone said that to me.
To impress means to make someone feel admiration or respect or to literally make a mark. As I look around my classroom, especially at this time of the schoolyear, I know my students well. I know their strengths and weaknesses and I find that I’m continuing to learn new things about each of them. We have a solid classroom community and each one of us (myself included) plays a role in our little social learning environment. Most of us contribute positively most of the time and all of us contribute negatively at some point in some way.
Each of my students has equal value in our classroom and I want them to know that I notice them. So, today we played the game “You Impress Me”.
I typed out a short note to each of my students explaining what impresses me about each of them. I tried to be specific and sincere with each impression statement. Depending on how our week has gone (goodness knows I’m tired this week), this required some thought, but it put me in good head space to focus on what I do appreciate about each kid.
After they finished their work, they got to come to my table where I laid all of the notes out in a grid. The kids read each of the notes and then had three guesses to pick the one that I wrote for them. Boy, did they enjoy that! Some of the kids needed more than three guesses, but that was ok.
It was so interesting to see what the kids guessed about themselves. Some of them were even helping one another and saying, “I KNOW that one is about you!”
Tired teachers, tired parents, tired anybody-that-works-with-kids, hang in there. : ) Keep your head in a good space and keep your eyes peeled for what is going well with your students. For every kid that’s driving you bonkers, there are 10 more that are doing wonderful things. I’m thinking about Scooter and Eddie! Remember: Keep it Positive!
