~sitting upon the buddy bench~

~from Kay County, Oklahoma on the last day of May 2019~


I've been helping out with summer school the past few days here in Ponca City as I filled in for teachers who weren't able to attend sessions this week.  It's been a good experience and one that allows me to meet some of the kids and staff from the district before school begins in August.  It's always been fun to work with kids in the summer and to get the chance to do so here has been quite rewarding to me.  Off and on throughout June and July, I'll be assisting with various sessions as teachers help students continue to grow and be prepared for the first day of the 2019-2020 school year.

While at summer school earlier this week, I came upon a most pleasant sight to see on one of the playgrounds.  It was something I had surely heard of before but had never really seen put into practice.  It was bright red orange in color with the words "BUDDY BENCH" on the back of it.  Just seeing it made my heart happy!

I asked one of the kids on the playground just what this bench was used for and with a smile on his face and a certain assurance in his voice came the reply.

"Mrs. Renfro, that's a buddy bench.  If we see a kid sitting on it during recess time it means that they need someone to be their friend.  You know, that they want to belong.  So we go over and ask them to play with us."

I thought to myself,

"Where was a buddy bench back in the days when I was a kid?"
Seeing the bench sitting there was a reminder to me of how things were when I was a little girl growing up on the prairies of south central Kansas.  I was painfully shy at times and often found myself standing alone on the playground wishing that someone would ask me to come and play with them.  It's not that I didn't have friends because I did.  It's just that when the members of my small circle of companions were either not at school or had decided to play with others, I couldn't seem to figure out how to mingle with the group.  Thankfully by the time I was a 3rd grader, I finally had grown out of that awkward stage.  Yet those first early years in elementary school were a good reminder of just how much I might have benefitted from having a place like a buddy bench to go to.

 Buddy benches are a great example of a way to begin building relationships and to me that is one of the most important aspects of teaching and learning.  They are like "seed starters" in the process of growing together.  As a teacher, I will be striving each day to not only build healthy, strong, and viable relationships with my 5th grade students and their families, but encouraging those young people to build the same types of alliances with one another as well.  

We send our children to school each year in order that they learn to become better readers and writers, mathematicians and scientists, and a plethora of other academic things.  Yet I feel sure that the academic portion of this all can never stand alone.  The importance of building relationships, ones that hopefully last a lifetime,  will always play an equally important role.

 And to think that it could all start out on a "buddy bench"!


Once I was a little kid, just like them.
5th grade 
1965-1966 school year
Haven Grade School
Haven, Kansas


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