More than Present
What It Actually Means to Show Up for a Student
As teachers, we regularly hear that we need to show up for our students. It usually comes from an administrator pushing teachers to keep working hard through the days before a break or the end of the year. What I think we’re supposed to hear: plan your lessons, teach hard, manage your classroom. But is that really what showing up looks like?
Showing up looks different depending on the student. I remember a high school boy who needed structure and consistency, showing up for him meant a lesson ready to go most days and an honest explanation when things had to change. A girl who struggled with classroom noise sometimes needed to sit on the floor behind my desk and have her own space. Another girl needed daily morning check-ins, because how the night before had gone at home predicted everything about her school day. One student quietly mentioned she had nothing but potatoes at home for the next week. Showing up for her meant finding food sooner than a week. Football players who wanted me at their games. A pregnant student who needed a midday nap to make it through the afternoon. And then the students who just need a teacher who teaches and cares — nothing more complicated than that.
Showing up also requires authenticity. Teachers are humans with good days and bad days. When we pretend otherwise, some students start to believe that adults just coast through life and others realize they don’t actually know us. It’s hard to trust someone who doesn’t seem to be showing up as themselves.
This was a real struggle for me one year when I wasn’t feeling well and was dealing with more classroom management challenges than I ever had before. I didn’t know how honest to be. But the students who knew me best, primarily my mentees, could already tell. So I told them the truth: I wasn’t okay.
They were more supportive than most of the adults around me. A mentoring relationship can go both directions when both people show up as humans.
One more thing showing up makes possible: students start showing up for each other. A freshman girl was bullied on the bus one morning. A boy pulled her ponytail and knocked her backward in the aisle. By the time the bus unloaded, several of my mentees had already gathered around her. When mentoring time came, the group took it upon themselves to decide what needed to happen so it never happened again. One of the older boys confronted the bully directly.
I didn’t organize any of that. The community did because somewhere along the way, they had learned what showing up for each other actually looks like.
They learned it from watching someone do it for them.