Building Better Relationships with Students (k-9)

This Summer time I was giving the opportunity to teach the a group of student to make their own films from start to finish

These student had no formal training whats so ever and I wanted them to have a chance to create there own projects and take them away from the stresses of being involved with their every day to day life has a student and as a child

My goal was to not only open these students up to film but also teach them how to be creative in there own way and to open a bigger world than just going to school and coming home

Day 1
We discussed what was film and how it impacted our everyday life. We Also discussed what jobs are there in a tv production or film crew

what I learned form this first day is that students can be more open to ideas than we think they would be but you first have to put an idea in front of them . They had so many question to ask me the first day that I had to tell them to write them all down and come back tomorrow .

My 2nd and 3rd Days were helping them figure out what type of story they wanted to tell
As I watched how and listen to their conversations, a lot of them wanted to create stories that had alot to do with death and horror... Now understandably that can create a great fun and exciting project for me but for a young child to have that on their mind was kind of freighting to me.

After coming up with four stories What I learned from this is

1.Never tell to your student that they have a bad idea, because just like an adult they can get very discourage and feel like you are "Pulling the Dictator Card" and shut down. As an adult we have to use creative ways to deal with bosses, customers and co-works etc and we know in our environment we can not just say things that are unsuitable at the for this particular situation.

1. Be creative. Shutting out ideas with students stunts your and their mental ability to create out of a situation. instead work around it

3.Learn to loosen up. They are children not robots and you are adult not a robot. A lot of the time I realize that teachers and staff treat these students with the old saying "Child are Children and nothing more" and that couldn't be farther from the truth.
In actuality Children are the teachers, because we know that everyone learns, thinks and sees things differently than others so to be effective in most cases we have to actually put ourselves in the students position to learn to "Teacher the Teacher" .

After Cleaning up their stories, the next thing they had to do is come up with a roles and positions. Some students were directors, actors, writers, lighting operators or as they call it (Lighters lol) etc.
I allowed the students to pic own roles because I wanted them to be responsible for something so no one was left behind.

Some of my students took there script farther than I expected and wrote out a whole entire script with details I was so fascinated with this student because she was also one of the directors and she put my writing to shame lol

One of my groups had a very interesting story that was called "The Curse of Barbie" which had to do with a evil barbie that was attacking people because she was sold away from her family.

This group was my biggest learning experience because, it had one student who had autism and three student who were not efficient in English and and one of those student was the main actress and she only spoke in Swahili
At first I had a very difficult time because of my ignorance I couldn't not see how this could work but once I put down the "Teaching Robot Brain" and became a student, I realized this could be a very great experience.

My students told me that they could have one of the students do the voice over for her and we can move our hands so she could know when to start and stop mouthing along with the the voice over.
This is a great idea that I did not think of.

I also realized that could use google translate (Thank God) to interact with her. Google work!!!

The next thing to do was start filming
And boy on a hot AZ summer day that is a lot of work, but my student acted as if they had no care in the world!
()

What I learned from watching my student direct, act and film was
These children had so much inside of them that has not yet been able to be explored because of the lack of creativity that most schools are limited to giving them.

Also by not giving them a way out to express these abilities they tend to shut down and become very depressed and introverted. (Like how I grew up)

One example is,
I saw this student that walk around the school everyday. he seemed very quiet and to himself. everyday I would look at him and say to myself that I know he is smart and I know he has something to give and I have to find a way to help him. so one day I stopped him on his way to class and I asked him "Hey kiddo what do you want to be when you grow up" he then told me with a excitement look "I want to be a writer" I then told him that I had also been a writer and I was working on finishing up books myself. after that talk I knew that I had to help this student get his creativity out but I did not know how yet. when I found out about the summer school program I jumped on it quick because I knew that these students weren't exposed to this type of stuff but they see it everyday. So I made it my goal to grab all of the student that I seemed were just like me at some point and tried to get them into this program. I finally caught up with that student again and told him that I would be doing the film and editing program and that he should come along. His eye grew really wide and said "Sure"! now this was a student that you could pass him up 100 time and never knew he was there but when I told him that it was like a bulb grew over him.

When he came to the program he not only acted but he co-direct, writ the story, and sketched the outline for the storyboard.
this all started with one question.

After Filming we had to do some editing

Student got to see some of there mistakes and things that they did great on. I was surprised with some of the students outcomes they filmed in only Four days .

I went back as most teachers do and asked all of my students some questions about film and edit and 90% of my class answered all of them question right. Most of my children were even telling me that they were going to start creating there own movies with there cellphones (Just like how I started out)

Overall, I learned that I was more effective in my teaching by letting my student show me what was inside of them and not become so much of a "Teaching dictator"

Now here is why these programs are s important
What most teacher do not understand is that these are the type of relationships you want to build with student out side of academia because it helps you build a foundation with them.
Also It helps you with other student there are associated with them. I had got a lot of great feed back from doing this programs. that I had children from other program tell me how they want to be in this program for after school next year.
But the truth of the matter is, Students sometimes can be rough and sometimes you need all the leverage you can get. And if student know who you are they will stand up for you when other student may not know you or thinks you are a "teaching Robot"

I was so excited because I was almost not given this opportunity because, my hiring staff didn't believe that this would be effective and tried to put me into a basket ball program.(Black man problems)

So go out there and start using these methods in your classrooms and see how effective you can be. Rememer You were them Once before