In my opinion, building positive student relationships is crucial to a successful school year. Once you’ve created this safe and welcoming environment- students will feel like they can do anything and be anything. I’ve found through my experience that when you take the time to build relationships with students, they are more willing to take academic risks within the classroom and they are more likely to want to please or make their teacher happy. To read more about why these relationships are important, click here.
Once you’ve caught up on why student relationships matter, you may start to wonder: “How can I foster these relationships in my classroom so I can have this successful school year you speak of?”
Well, keep on reading!
Picture this: It’s the first day of school and you’ve got so much to do with your new bunch already; you’ve got to cover classroom procedures, rules, schedules and more. All of these first day of school traditional activities are important, but do you want to know what’s most important? Getting to know your students.
You may be thinking: “Yes, but I have all year for that.” While that may be true, I cannot stress the importance of getting to know them on day one. You see, the sooner you know them, the sooner you create buy-in, which means students will start taking academic risks much sooner than if you gradually get to know them.
Did I get you to buy-in yet? No-pun intended, haha! Here are four relationship building activities/tips for you and your students.
1. A simple survey.
The survey that you choose or create depends on what you want to know about your students. Do you want to know who they live with? How many siblings they have? What are the names of their siblings? Their favorite subject and why? How specific do you want to get with them? In my experience and opinion, the more specific you are with them, the better information you will get out of them, which will ultimately lead to getting to know them better. To make this even more engaging, try doing a survey using Google Forms, kids love when you incorporate technology!
2. Tell them about YOU.
“Wait, you mean my teacher doesn’t live at school?”
Students LOVE to know about what’s going on in their teacher’s life. Just a few years ago, I bought my first home with my husband and I spent time showing them pictures and explaining to them how it was a two-family and we were renting one side to make some extra money. The students instantly had questions, and do you know what? I answered them, honestly. Some teachers may say this is sharing too much information. But do you know students in this particular class made more than a year’s growth during their 10 months with my co-teacher and I? Can I tie that directly to my relationships with the children? Of course not, but I do whole- heartedly believe that this directly impacted their growth.
3. Stay up to date on current trends
I know what you’re thinking- I don’t need to know current trends, I’m their teacher, not their friend. Here’s my answer to that: you’re right, you are their teacher, not their friend. However, knowing these current trends and trying to creatively incorporate them into your classroom will create more buy-in, which will consequently help to build relationships with students, encourage students to take academic risks, etc.
Do you remember when “The Dab” was the latest and greatest? Do you recall seeing a D.A.B. anchor chart to help students with the process of elimination? How about when the song Watch Me Whip by Silentó was the most popular song? Do you recall seeing a teacher use this to his/her advantage by creating an acoustic poem with test prep strategies? These are the kind of trends you want to stay in front of and use to your advantage. The best part is, thanks to the internet, you don’t have to spend all of your time analyzing trends and creating these things on your own; both of these examples above can be found by a simple Google or Pinterest search!
4. Take their feelings into consideration
Remember, if you teach elementary school, these are tiny humans- even fifth graders are still babies. Yes, I said it, they’re still babies. Don’t get me wrong, do some students talk back? Are they disrespectful? Or are they rude by the time they’re in the upper elementary classroom? Absolutely. But, at the end of the day, they’re still only 10 or 11 years old. Some students in the upper elementary classroom are going through physical changes that may be causing them to act out and other students may be dealing with other social-emotional issues that are causing them to act out. As their champion , as their teacher, it is our responsibility to hear their side of the story, to listen and most importantly to care. When a student can tell that you genuinely care about them and their feelings, (I think you know what I’m about to say here), they will trust you , adore you and ultimately work the hardest they ever have for you .
There are a variety of ways you may choose to do this. Depending on your population, the grade level and your schedule, you may want to have a morning meeting with students where they have a set number of minutes to share things happening in their lives or share their thoughts/ feelings. You may choose to have students spend their recess/ lunch time with you a couple times a month to check in or on an as-needed-basis. You may choose to do this at the end of the day before dismissal. The crucial thing is that you spend the time listening to your tiny humans (I mostly calm them “my babies”). The time spent listening to them is not time wasted, it is time invested into building positive relationships with your students.
Please Note:
All this to say that there are fine lines that you don’t want to cross. Obviously, there are things that happen in my personal life that I don’t openly share with my students. In addition, there are popular trends that cannot be brought to school due to lack of appropriateness. While it’s important to listen to students and their feelings, you want to make sure this isn’t taking up all 6.5 hours of your day and hindering them from completing assignments/ classwork. There are limitations to all of these tips and activities for building relationships with students and the balance is found in my opinion, through experience.
Xo,
