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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I have a difficult student and I happened to have the same lunch time as he does.  I asked him privately if he would be interested in coming to my classroom to eat lunch with me.  I let him bring one friend too as long as the friend behaved himself.  We all sat eating and talking.  The both loved some video games so I asked them questions about them.  Sometimes he didn't want to bring a friend which was fine.  I got to know him a bit more and not surprisingly, he has a pretty crappy home life.  I kind of let him talk as much or as little as he wanted about whatever topics he wanted.  He loved writing on my mini whiteboards so we would play Picttionary and Hangman after we ate.  I brought my son to work one day he had off school and this student was really looking forward to meeting him (I do talk about my son from time to time in class  :)  Just having lunch with this kid once a week away from a class full of students helped take the edge off him.  He wanted attention so I gave it to him.  He still misbehaved but it was more like middle school boy stuff trying to make his friends laugh.  My teacher friend had a few kids who loved cracking jokes during class so she told them if they could get through a class with no joking around, she would let them tell one clean joke each at the beginning of the next class.  You do the best you can do.  [/quote]

Forming a relationship does go a long way. Some of these kids' stories would break your heart. Some of these kids don't get to be kids outside of school. It is definitely exhausting, but try to be the good in their day in some way. My students also love to hear about my family and they ask to see pictures and really care. I mentioned offhand that my dog's birthday was coming up and the kid brought in a card he had made for my dog. We had come a long way from the beginning of the year when he would blatantly defy every direction given. But it has to be genuine interest--they can smell fake interest from a mile away. [/quote]

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