The Fourth Wall.

I love getting to know my students.  If anything, I am an extremely social person - so teaching 80 teenagers per day is perfect for me.  I love to learn about their families, histories, and passions - and I enjoy most of the experiences that we have together throughout the year. In addition, most of my students (and their families) learn about my life history, and often hear stories about my family, travels, and experiences through my teaching.  

That being said, I work diligently to maintain healthy and well defined boundaries with my students, always with the hope that they have a clear understanding that I am their teacher, not a casual friend or buddy.   So I stress that my personal life is not something that my students are allowed to cross in to.  Generally, they are respectful of these lines, and I am always appreciative of it.

But I am a big believer that successfully teaching someone anything is a social experience - and one that must be understood from a personal perspective.  To learn, I mean really learn, we have to connect to it personally.  To that end, I break down the fourth wall in my classroom.  I learned about the fourth wall concept as a young theater student, and it is defined as such, "The fourth wall is the imaginary "wall" at the front of the stage in a traditional three-walled box-set theater.  Speaking directly to or otherwise acknowledging the audience through this imaginary wall in a play, is referred to as "breaking the fourth wall." Think Ferris Bueller (or at a Ryan Adams concert) speaking directly to the audience - it is endearing.  And it helps all of us root for him down the stretch.  

In order to truly teach my students history, I often have to present stories (of the Romans, wars, myths, etc.) to them - and teach them analysis.  But when I make mistakes, or when I see that a personal story from my life may better explicate the idea - I break the fourth wall and speak directly to my students.  When I am enforcing the tardy policy, or discussing grade percentages at the end of the semester - I am performing a professional duty - and all of my students know that.  But they also know that I am a normal, vulnerable human being who is working a job, and lives his life outside of that job.  

I believe that one of the biggest pitfalls that teachers fall into is hiding behind that fourth wall of professionalism, at the expense of developing positive relationships with students, and/or showing any vulnerability in the classroom.  So while my boundaries are real - by the end of the year, my students (and their families) and I really know each other well. Reconciling the balance between healthy boundaries and healthy teacher/student relationships is a huge part of teaching - and I hope that I can continue to find the sweet spot in that effort.