Relationships with Students

I am learning about Evidence-based teaching this year.  I believe it is the similar to performance-based learning which we have been studying and working on since the days of Mastery Connect.  Evidence-based learning has many elements to it, and one of the most important elements of it is teacher-student relationships.   To forge excellent relationships with your students it takes time, energy, patience, and care.  You need to show them that you will be willing to go the extra mile for them, and yet you also need to have the highest of expectations for their success.

It seems that the growth mindset works for this concept.  It may be difficult at first to imagine that you can care for and know every student that you work with.  It may even seem overwhelming at first.  However, it takes perseverance, it takes asking your students tons of questions, it takes understanding where each one of them comes from, and it takes making decisions based on where they are, not where you think perhaps they should be.  It takes bringing them from the place they are at, to the next place, or to the place after that, wherever that may be.

I remember early in my career I came to see my principal about some behavior issues with one of my students.  He would just take things from my desk, without asking.  He was surly, and arrogant.  I complained to my principal about this, and he said words to me that I have remembered and thought about to this day.  "It is our job to take our students from wherever they are, to the next place, no matter where they begin.  It is not our job to judge where they begin, but instead to help them move forward from that place."  I have lived by that mantra with my teaching, since then, and I have often caught myself beginning to judge, but take a deep breath, wait and think again.  We must show that we care for our students first, and then we have to apply pressure to them, which is the same as having expectations of them, but without a sense of judgement as to where we think they should be.  This will only bring us frustration as teachers, and this will turn into apathy, aloofness, and eventually burnout.  My principal from the early nineties has helped me stay away from all these things, and I hope this will keep me going for as long as I am healthy, happy and well-adjusted enough to teach music, drama, and all the other things we teach in middle school!

Care and pressure, patience, empathy and seeing a student as a whole person are the most important elements of forging great relationships with your students.