Speaker: Betsy Butler, Course Creator
What do you hope teachers will take away from this course?
Betsy Butler: Hi, I'm Betsy Butler. I'm the course creator of course 5643: Trust, Humor, Praise, and Connection for Meaningful Relationships with Students. This is all about connecting with kids and that involves giving them agency through trust and also being able to connect with them on their level through humor and connection to whatever they find important. Praise we really talk about in the way of being productive and specific so that students really understand that it's not just a general statement, and being able to really connect with their teachers so that they can go to the teacher for help or for just reinforcement. This is just a great way to open up the lines of communication and the relationship building for teachers and students.
What do you love about this course?
Betsy Butler: What I love about this course is that it boils down to four basic tenants and that is trust, humor, praise and connection. A lot of these things have a direct relationship also to how behavior is in classrooms. I know that there's a lot of teachers wondering about post pandemic behaviors. But I think we have to work extra hard at tapping into the social emotional skills and really understanding how to create those relationships with students who really sometimes resist that kind of attention, but also to meet them where they are and to be able to engage with them in healthy ways and provide ways that they can control their own learning. It's a really, it's very basic, but it's something that we all need to do in order to make students feel safe and seen in their classrooms.
