Showing students you care while maintaining professional distance is a tightrope not every teacher successfully walks. The girl was suspended for two days. ThunderRidge is not unique. Boundaries between teachers and students, among students themselves, are negotiated every day in every school. What is different about ThunderRidge is Seminar.
Seminar encourages teachers to be more than teachers.
It asks them to be mentors, coaches and, in some cases, confidants. But we are showing caring by lowering our expectations rather than raising them. Caring is getting transformed into leniency. Every teacher draws a line, Granas says. But some lines are more defined than others.