In my Education class this semester our teacher was telling us a few tricks she had up her sleeve of easy yet very interesting ways to learn information about your students within the first week. Instead of waiting until you have trouble with the child, requesting a parent/teacher conference, pulling information out of the parent as to why the student is so disruptful/unwilling/etc, and then adapting your teaching for that child based on the issues. You can gather information from the exercise she told us to use to skip the middle part and go straight to the adapting.
One thing she suggested was asking them to draw a family portrait. This may not sound like much but it can be very telling about the child's home life. For example, if they draw the parents far apart from each other this could mean that the parents are divorced or they don't spend time together or aren't loving towards each other in front of the kids. If they draw the Dad sitting in a chair and the Mom standing it could mean that the mom is always on the go and their Dad watches TV. If they draw a picture of themselves with their grandparents it could mean their parents are absent and that can create a whole bag of issues. All of these can be very traumatic to a child which in turn affects their performance at school.
On a happier note if they draw the parents standing together with the kids and hearts and flowers and rainbows and kittens this probably means they have a wonderful home life. Dr. Hale (my prof) said that one year she had a little girl that drew a picture full of those things and when she had her first parent/teacher conference with her parents she said she was pretty sure she saw hearts and flowers and rainbows floating around their heads because she could "feel" their love for each other and their daughter during the conference. So sweet!
This is exercise seems like it is a little more geared for elementary kids (which I do NOT want to teach) but I think I might try it out and see what I can get out of the junior high kids. If it doesn't work it's OK, it would be good to try though.
Our homework assignment was to draw our family portrait and bring it to class the next week. Here is my family portrait* (you can click on it to make it bigger):
I originally thought I would draw my whole family (mom, dad, brother, sisters) since we're not married yet but 1. My family tree is too complex and 2. Chris and I ARE our own family now even though we haven't been hitched. We have a house and a puppy baby together, I mean how much more of a family can you get? Haha.
Do you think my teacher will see hearts floating around my head from this picture? It was funny because after she assigned us the homework she said "Now I know everyone is going to go home and draw hearts, flowers, rainbows, and kittens on their family portrait so that I don't try to analyze your pictures for any disfunction." Everyone laughed and agreed.
*This was Chris pre-haircut. His 5 o'clock shadow is pretty funny. Chris made fun of me because we don't any noses. I've never been able to draw stick figure noses. Do like Max' occupation? Cutest puppy Ever! He kind of looks like a fox in this portrait.
