Materials: Sunshine / Up-At-Night Reflection Sheets
This activity is best done with a small group of colleagues so you can share your observations and learning together.
Begin by filling out the Sunshine / Up-At-Night Reflection Sheets for two students who fit these criteria. A Sunshine student is one you look forward to seeing each day when you arrive at school - they consistently bring you joy and are fun to have in class. An Up-At-Night student is one who keeps you awake when go to bed with those quesitons like, "Why did things go so poorly with them today? What could I have done differently?"
When you fill out these sheets you may find that you don't have answers for all the prompts. Notice where you have gaps. Do you know more about one of these students than the other? Why might that be?
Share your findings with your colleagues - you may choose to keep the names of your students anonymous or share learning together about students you have in common as they may have knowledge about these students that you do not that could fill in your portrait.
Something that can be particularly effective is to keep coming back to these students when you meet with your peers over the course of the school year. What new things do you learn? What new strategies can you try to reach each of these students? How does thinking about new ways to reach these young people at polar ends of the classroom management spectrum inform what you do with the rest of your students?