How would this make you feel if you came into work, a friend’s house, or even your own home and everyone is there, and they don’t acknowledge that you have arrived.  What if no one spoke to you for the first couple of minutes, would you feel welcome?  Would you feel awkward?  How would you handle this?  Now picture a student walking into their classroom. Does the teacher and other students greet them?  Does anyone smile at them and welcome them to school for the day? Do they keep going with what you are doing and there is no acknowledgement of the student entering the room?  How do you think the students feel?

I know how I like to be greeted upon entering a classroom, my home, or a friend’s home.  I believe many people feel the same way, we all like to be acknowledged and validated.  I believe this is what happens when you welcome students to the classroom each day.  According to an article published by Edutopia.org called Welcoming Students with a Smile (https://www.edutopia.org/article/welcoming-students-smile) there are some incredibly positive outcomes to greeting children at the door.  It helps create a sense of community, it helps build trust, and it decrease behavior problems in class. I can picture some teacher's eyes getting big and them saying what.  Yes it helps decrease behavior problems.

The reason this works is that you are letting the child know they are important.  It says that you think that they are worth the effort to say good morning and see them.  I ask then how hard is it to greet a child and acknowledge that you are glad to see them.  With the outcomes being so important and the effort so small, this to me seems like a no brainer.  I would encourage everyone to take a couple of minutes in the morning and greet your students in the morning.  Set a positive tone for your classroom that builds community and trust.

When dealing with children, adults can very easily fall into the battle of wills game.  This is the least favorite game of parents, guardians, and teachers the world over.  My brother, Rob is the champion of this game.  One of the stories that is often in shared to show just how far he is willing to push this game goes something like this. 

He was attending Special Needs Preschool.  The teacher was working with him on pulling up his own pants after going to the bathroom.  Well, Rob was not having it.  One day he went potty and came to the door of the bathroom for the teacher to help him pull up his pants.  His teacher told him to pull up his pants. Rob refused.  The teacher refused to pull them up.  He stood in the bathroom doorway until my Mom came and picked him up. I do not know how long he stood in the doorway with his pants and underwear around his ankles, but it was obviously long enough that the teacher was very frustrated.  Rob on the other hand could have cared less, he was fine to just stand there and wait for someone to do their job (Rob believes that everyone in his world has specific jobs that they do to take care of him) and pull up his pants.

He is still very much like this he will not want to do anything unless he wants to (we all fall into this at some point).  He takes it to the next level as the previous story shows.  We have learned to negotiate around the situation and hopefully (at least most days), we do not fall into the battle of wills.  We are not always successful, but we have fewer instants were we both end up frustrated if we take the extra time to not turn the situation to always turn it into a battle of wills game.
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What do we do to help mitigate these situations, we give choices.  Only choices we are willing to accept.  We discuss the order of events and what the expectations are.  We support each other and encourage each other to step back when a situation is moving into that battle.  We have found sometimes it takes a different person asking him to do something.  We have also learned that to ask him to do something then walk away.  We have learned that it takes time to do these things, but the key is to always support each other.