#youmatter

A new twist on my welcome letter!  As part of the Summer Learning Series I've been exposed to a lot of information about the You Matter message.  This week's challenge even included writing a letter to our future students.  I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to do the challenge properly because I feared coming across inauthentic.  I'm glad I tried anyway.  I confess, I did look at Arin's letter for ideas and it helped me.  I liked her idea about telling her students that she had been thinking about them a lot over the summer even before she met them and that she had been preparing for them.  That made sense to me.  I actually have been thinking about my future students with everything I've been learning and preparing over the summer so that's not just a fanciful thing to say.  That shift in thinking really changed the tone of my normal welcome letter.  It's a small shift, but a powerful one.  I usually tell them a little bit about me and I hope they have a great year, but by telling them I've been thinking about them and that I know they are going to be different and fun and interesting and that I've been preparing things just for them adds a more personal connection to start our relationship.  I usually say I love my job, but this time I say YOU are the reason I love my job!

Who knows if they'll notice or read it any differently than any other ordinary welcome letter, but I hope that it starts a whole year of little ways that I show them that they matter.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hs5lxp3c4x6vlqu/Bienvenidos.docx