Communicate to Help Students Build Self-Esteem

It is likely that there will be students in your classroom who come to school with poor self-esteem. They won’t care about their achievements, or they’ll shun your acknowledgement of their worth. They will also be afraid, though they may never say so, that they will never be good at anything. Here are some ideas to help build your students’ self-esteem:

• Build in success. Create situations where failure is not likely to occur and structure tasks into a series of easy-to-achieve steps. Help students build a chain of continuous, unbroken successes.
• Make your expectations realistic. Clearly state what you expect and explore with your students whether your expectations resemble theirs.
• Find ways to keep interest high! Try to keep lessons interesting and acknowledge when a task becomes “old.” Students may appreciate your effort and resist the work less.
• State the positive. Stay away from typically judgmental evaluations like “right” and “wrong,” “good” and “bad.” Try describing your students’ work instead. Emphasize the positive. Tell students what you see and how you feel about it.
• Capitalize on achievements. Use one success to create another. Share successes with parents by sending notes home. Use “Success Cards.” Be sure to read the positive message to the student first.
• Share evidence of success. Keep a portfolio of students’ writing, drawings, and other work.
• Recruit parents and guardians. Encourage parents and guardians to display their child’s work. Suggest that they praise the work in front of friends and relatives. Tell them to make it a point to compliment some portion of their child’s work and to recognize even a small improvement. Also, suggest that they treasure their child’s work by saving samples from every school year.

Source: National School Public Relations Association, Principal Communicator, February 2005