The first day of school. Blue, black, green, and purple backpacks stacked everywhere. Student voices crashing like waves at one end of the hallway, breaking somewhere in the middle. Echoing and reechoing down plastered corridors, off windows, into portals of learning. If I could bottle that first-day-of-school energy and just keep it somewhere. To be used whenever I needed it, I would. I wouldn't sell it. That would be against the educator's code of service to humanity; or poverty, depending on your point of view. What I would do is liberally sprits that essence of first day whenever things got tough. Whenever a student complained about a bad grade. Whenever the trash in the cafeteria needed to be addressed. Or whenever those times in the life of every school that are so difficult that people just stop talking to each other. Everyone has those moments. Whenever I ask my colleagues about the buzz on the first day of school they mention that it is from a lack of sleep from the night before. Over tired? Adrenaline? Students pretty much say the same thing. With so much anticipation of what is to come, sleep is just not often possible. It's not just lack of sleep and adrenaline that make the hallway an ocean of sounds on the first day of school, but something else. It is the anticipation of what is to come. It is one of those rare moments in life where the slate is wiped clean. All agree to begin anew. Capturing that moment would make me the richest man in the world. But, as we all know, wealth is not why most educators go into teaching. Relationships are the draw.

Rapport is the single greatest reason that I feel that I have been effective as an educator. Those moments with students, as well as colleagues, that keep us up all night in anticipation of yet another year. It doesn't matter what transpired over the summer. It doesn't matter how the last year ended. Most people would agree it is the specter of our work reflected in the relationships that we foster with each other as educators or with our students. Relationships extend outward, seismically. We are even thrilled to work with students who aren't our students, or with colleagues who don't necessarily work where we do. It is through relationships that I try to build mini-communities within larger ones that may get everybody on the same page. Whenever I have to say, "no" to a request that is as sound as sound can be, I hope that rapport will lessen the blow. Rapport allows me to get more done in the classroom, especially for those students who feel that they just do not have more to give. Rapport transmutes those difficult moments that are not the curriculum or agenda but allows the curriculum and agenda to be effective. Hearing what is said is the key to rapport.

My greatest strength as an educator is the ability to listen deeply. I can even pinpoint the moment that I realized this about myself. I was a freshman in high school and I had just gotten into my first high school play. Mr. Clarke, who was the director of the reader's theater production of David Mamet's "The Water Engine," gave his version of "there are no small parts only small actors" speech when something clicked in me. I vaguely heard him say that the most effective actors are the ones who can get you to pay attention to them without using words. He reiterated several times that it wasn't about upstaging someone else. Just listening deeply. I thank Mr. Clarke, now a fellow educator, for conveying the germ of a philosophy that has been most effective for me ever since. Listening deeply establishes the kind of rapport that supersedes all of the theories about pedagogy and learning that I have ever read or currently use. I am no master by any means, but I try to work at it every day. It is often time consuming. Never reactive. And sometimes frustrating keeping the hounds of response at bay. Yet, listening to both students and colleagues allows for the kind or gentle persuasion or encouragement that is often overlooked in the text. Whenever I can't see the forest for the trees or the floor for the backpacks, I return to the moment on the first day and listen closely to the ocean of things to come.

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Credits: Brian Thomas