On Friday, a coworker said I was "cold and distant" to students. I don't think he meant it with any bad intent. This really saddened me. I guess I am stand-offish with students, not allowing their greetings to go far beyond, "I'm good. Take a seat." I admit, I don't want the latent and potential chaos of the student body that I observe from afar to permeate my classroom; this stand-offishness is my method of preventing it. Maybe I am trying to be a tough cookie to compensate for my being a young white female. I have settled into a "nothing but business" teacher persona this year. It's good that students can tell I care about their learning through the conducive-to-learning environment I provide (physically and instructionally/discipline-wise), but they cannot necessarily tell I care about them.
How can I improve on this? Perhaps I will set a goal to ask at least one "I care about you beyond the four walls of this classroom" question to one student per day, and vary that student until I have asked them all one. On their way in the room, "How is soccer practice going?" or "Did you enjoy the game Friday?" or "What was the best and worst part of your weekend?"
