ACTIONN VOICES

Building Relationships Key to Success

Michelle Hammond, Teacher at Innovations High School

This year alone, Michelle has done over 40 Parent Teacher Home Visits. She has been doing them for 5 years now, even before she was paid to do them. She believes that the first step in effectively teaching a child is building a relationship with them. She says the better the relationship is with the child the more likely the child will graduate, and for the student to be fully engaged in learning.    

Going on Parent Teacher Home Visits have been a constant reminder to Michelle of how important it is to treat every student and family differently. Last Fall Michelle did a Parent Teacher Home Visit with a student who is a teen mother. The young lady was not living with her parents and moving around a lot. She was struggling with school attendance.  At the time of the Parent Teacher Home visit she was living with her older sister. There was tension and frustration between the student and her sister because of the student’s poor attendance and grades dropping.

Michelle helped the student tell her sister about her upcoming class presentation for the following week. The following week at the time of the presentation, in walked the student’s whole family to be there to show support.  The student burst out in tears of joy to see the support.  The student knew that the sister cared about her after that, and that she wasn’t just being hard on her.

Michelle says that she is continuing to work with the family and she is seeing the student make real progress as a result.  “I’ve always believed that you cannot teach a child anything, if you don’t first have a relationship with them.”