What if some of the most important relationship-building of the school year happened before students ever walked into your classroom? In Hugging Porcupines: Month-by-Month Strategies to Support Our Most Challenging Students (ASCD, 2026), veteran educator Mike Anderson guides teachers through the school year month by month, detailing practical strategies for reaching the students with prickly behavior who need the most support—the “porcupines.” This excerpt, drawn from his chapter on July and August, turns to the groundwork teachers can lay in the summer to better support students who struggle. By using a simple note-taking system, teachers can capture students’ strengths, interests, and relationships—filled in through student files and conversations with last year’s teachers—so that by the first day, you already know something real about the learners who are likely to challenge you most.
The Last Weeks of Summer: July and August
The school year is about to start! Everything is fresh and bright, and it’s exciting to know that you’re about to meet your next batch of students. Amid this excitement, you might also have some trepidation. You know you’ll have some students who are challenging this year. Perhaps you already know who they are. One year I knew a particular porcupine well before he arrived in my room. In that school at that time, we got our class list for the coming year at the end of the previous one. In May, I knew that Richard would be in my class next year, so I started to work on building a relationship with him right away. I had bus duty that year, so each afternoon, I made a point of chatting with Richard and trying to get to know him. “Are you playing any football this summer?” “Do you have any pets?” “Which friends will you hang out with once summer starts?” He answered my questions with as few words as possible and seemed eager to get on his bus. After several days of this, he stopped halfway up the bus steps, turned and looked over his shoulder at me, and asked (in a suspicious voice), “Why are you being so nice to me all of a sudden? Am I in your class next year or somethin’?”
Richard was definitely challenging at times, but overall, we had a great year together, in part because I took the time to really get to know him. Let’s consider some practical strategies for how to set your porcupines up for a great year. This work begins in the weeks before the school year even starts.
Getting to Know Your Students
David Brooks, author of How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen, argues that “there is one skill that lies at the heart of any healthy person, family, school, community organization, or society: the ability to know another person, to let them feel valued, heard, and understood” (2023, p. 9). This is perhaps your most important challenge early in the school year. We need to get to know our students. It’s one of the essential ingredients in forming positive teacher-student relationships. Certainly, this is a primary focus of the first weeks of school, but you can begin this process even before the first day of school.
Create a Note-Taking System
It’s easy to get overwhelmed with all of the information you need to learn about your incoming students. Consider creating a note-taking system. This will help you keep track of important information you learn about all your students, but it will be especially invaluable as you work to connect with your porcupines.
First, decide what kinds of information you want to collect. Make sure to focus on positive categories such as strengths, interests, friends and social connections, and family and background information. This kind of system can be especially helpful if you are a middle or high school teacher who works with more than 100 students each day or a special area teacher who might work with 500 or more different students each week.
We need to get to know our students. It’s one of the essential ingredients in forming positive teacher-student relationships.
Remind Yourself About Developmental Hallmarks
Have you ever received a new class in the fall and been surprised by how young your new students look? It’s helpful to remember that even if you’re teaching the same grade as last year, your new students are about 10 months younger than your previous students were in the spring. If you teach 6th grade, your last batch of students were 12 years old and moving into 7th grade. Your new students will be just barely 11 and are just moving up from 5th grade. That’s a big difference.
Reminding yourself about child development can be especially helpful if you’re changing grade levels. I remember the year I switched from teaching 5th grade to 3rd grade. My former students were moving into 6th, and my new ones were just in 2nd. They looked so little at the beginning of the year!
One of the reasons this can be so helpful is that sometimes common misbehaviors aren’t really misbehaviors—they’re just developmentally normal behaviors. Seven-year-olds are going to tell you when someone else swears. Fifth graders are going to jump to touch the tops of doorframes as they walk through the halls. Tenth graders can be upset one moment and silly the next.
To brush up on the developmental hallmarks of the age you teach, check out the CDC website: www.cdc.gov/child-development/resources/index.html. Although this information is geared toward parents, the hallmarks they offer are helpful for teachers as well. Another resource to check out is the book Yardsticks by Chip Wood (2017). It offers classroom and school specific information and advice for working with children ages 4–14.
Explore Student Files
I often didn’t do this well enough when I was a classroom teacher. Some of my students had files that were so big that I got overwhelmed. Some had IEPs that were complex, and I would count on the first meeting with the special education team as my chance to get caught up on the basics. Don’t do what I did—it wasn’t enough!
Take time in the weeks before school starts to familiarize yourself with information passed to you from last year’s classroom and special education teachers. There is important information in there about possible accommodations students might need, and if you’re aware of these, you might be able to turn these accommodations into regular practices for all students. For example, if a student needs materials printed in a large font, you might always have a large-print option available with any handout that any student can use if they want. In this way you’re supporting that student’s need while making a more inclusive classroom that can better support other learners as well.
Talk with Last Year’s Teachers
Perhaps one of the best ways to learn about your students is by talking with the teachers who had them last year. You might be leery of asking certain teachers about your incoming students, especially your porcupines. Some staff seem to relish venting about students they found frustrating, and you might not want to be negatively biased by their rantings. So don’t ask those colleagues about those students. Or if you do, take what they share with a grain of salt.
Ask positive colleagues about challenging students’ strengths and interests. Find out what strategies your colleagues found helpful with these students. Who did they work well with? Which peers do they struggle with? Is there anyone they should especially not sit with in the first few days of school? Is there another adult in the school—a counselor or art teacher or special educator—who they have an especially close relationship with? If so, make sure to interview that colleague next.
Bring your note-taking system with you as you talk with previous years’ teachers so you can jot down all that you learn.
Hugging Porcupines
Strategies for reaching and teaching our “porcupines”—those students who struggle in school and challenge us most.
