Reasons Not to Have Favorites - A Student Called "D"

            While some of my students this summer drove me up a wall in a fiery storm of frustration, D was one student who made coming in worth it every single day. With a smile on her face and a go-get-em attitude, D was undoubtedly one of my favorite students (yes, I’m aware that I’m not allowed to have favorites).  She immediately liked me and often stayed after to chat with me for a few minutes before lunch or after school.  But when it came to D’s work in my classroom, she wasn’t at the top of the pile.

            D tried very hard in my class. When I assigned an essay or short paragraph for students to write, she furiously worked on it to the point that she often needed additional time to finish. She wrote more than any student in the class on every assignment, and worked hard to correct her weak points. She was well behaved, always on task, and consistently improving.

            But she wasn’t improving enough – D needed her scores to really shoot up in a hurry in order to pass the class. But I didn’t push her the way I should have. I often praised D for her natural writing talent. But the fact of the matter was that D didn’t have the skills necessary to really reach the high benchmarks I had set for my class.

            Looking back, I wish I were more direct with D. But fear got in the way. I feared that she wouldn’t trust or like me anymore, at which point she might shut down and perform even worse. Don’t get me wrong – I never outright lied to D. I always gave her constructive criticism and never let her think that her writing was perfect. But I wasn’t as harsh as she needed me to be in order to really grow as a writer and student.

            At the end of our four weeks together, D had certainly improved her writing. She articulated to me on the last day that she now knew that writing could always get better and that reading your work over one time before turning it in was not sufficient for her to get to where she needed to be in life. I’m happy that D took those lessons from my class, but at the end of the day I know she deserved a better education than what I gave her this summer.

If there’s one thing that I learned from D it’s not to worry so much about whether the kids like me or not. I have the ability to forge strong relationships with my students, and I need to stay strong with myself in order to make sure that I push my students to the levels of success that they can achieve. If I had pushed D harder, she may have been mad at me initially.  But I know that we would have gotten back to our former relationship in time, particularly when she saw the fruits of all her hard work.

I’m not worried about her, because I know she can take what she learned in my class and push herself to be better. I see now, more clearly than before, the danger of having favorite students. It’s not so much that I’ll treat my favorite students any better than the others, it’s that I may allow them to believe that the small gains they make are larger than they really are. That’s far more dangerous than the first scenario. No matter what my students’ personalities are like, and no matter how much I like or dislike them, I need to stay strong and push them to the degree that they deserve to be pushed.