Yesterday I had the good fortune to attend NCTM in Philadelphia. This meant that I had to do the hard work of preparing to not be at work and I left some assignments behind and imposed on colleagues to cover my classes. I am teaching two small sections of a Discrete Math class that we just created at our school. Most of the students in this class do not see themselves as mathematicians, but I am working on changing that self-assessment. I have been working hard at creating an environment where these students take ownership of the class conversations and they work together. I was SO flattered by the remarks of my colleagues who sat in on these classes yesterday. One colleague referred to the class she was with as a great community of math students. My boss covered my other class and remarked how great they were and how they worked together the whole period. It certainly helps that my boss saw this in action! So proud of how these students have stepped up and taken on the responsibilities of being such active participants in our journey.
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one good thing 
From a teacher’s perspective I think it is very important to be proud of our students. And this post really highlighted the pride many teachers have in their students.
Building on from this, I am curious if you told your students you were proud of them? I have been a teacher for several years and always feel proud of the people I teach, but it was not until recently that I started to tell my students I was proud of them. I found that this simple act really changed the teacher-student relationship (for the better) and resulted in more motivated students.
I was wondering about your experiences?
Feel free to check out my post on a similar topic where I discuss the reasons why educators should be proud of their students. It really does complement this article quite nicely (I think).
http://www.joshesl.com/josh-blog-efl-in-south-korea/be-proud-of-your-students
Thanks for your post,
Josh
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