Relationship Building

Family–School Collaboration and Positive Behavior Support

• Students who have family involved in the school report more academic success, there is more support for the teachers and the school, have better behaviour, attend post-secondary levels at a higher rate and this is regardless of background
• Teachers need to be aware that parental involvement may differ for different families. Working class families tend to do the "wait and see" but still consider themselves involved. Middle - class families bring their concerns directly to the teacher more often.

Power of Personal Relationships

This article suggests that coercive teachers, those who focus only on rules put the students into a "flight or fight" mode where the brain and the body is defensive and not open to learning. They offer a set of tools to help teachers form the relationship that is necessary to be a great or master teacher.

• Know your students and let them know you - use interest surveys to get to know students and vary instruction
• Re - establish contact with student have a negative experience
• Have high expectations
• Active and empathic listening skills need to be used
• Get involved as a coach or other activity so that there is a relationship out of the classroom

They also discuss teacher traits that need to be developed:

• Respect, courtesy and fairness

Making Classrooms Safe for Adolescent Learning

Adolescents today are different from those of before. In order for students to be successful the classrooms need to be "safe" for teens today.

• Teachers are more often required to help support the student emotionally and socially. They need to be a mentor for students in this regard.
• The difference between students who are resilient and those who fail are that those who succeed have a sense of competence, belonging, usefulness, potency and optimism
• Some tools that can be used to help this are: goal setting, portfolios, cooperative learning and using various differentiated instruction for learning styles psychologically safe classrooms provide trust, relationship building and positive interactions
• Suggested that students inner stories be connected with the outer stories of the topic that is being learned (story telling connection to Coyote Mentoring)

Adolescent Trust in Teachers: Implications for Behavior in the High School Classroom

This article lists some very interesting aspects of building relationships with students. It focuses on those students who are facing regular disciplinary actions.

• It notes that if teachers learn to work with students with past problems then teachers will also be able to relate better with the "good" students
• Students do not automatically give the teacher the authority that they teacher may think he/she deserves. The leadership and authority need to be learned or developed.
• An adolescent consciously decides whether to obey a teacher in response to how they see the relationship with that teacher.
• Trust is an important part of voluntarily following orders. (This has been found in the study of adults and is thought to be true for adolescents in high school)
• If the student feels that the teacher cares for him/her and wants what is best for him, then he will respond to the teacher's demands
• Relational approach to discipline tries to work on the relationship with the student. Teachers who use this approach can be identified if they talk about trying to connect with the student by building emotional connections.
• Teachers who use a relational approach probably have less discipline problems because they learn the student's emotional cues and so intervene sooner.
• The article also mentions that differentiated instruction is just as important as the relationship building.
• School counselors (and administrators - my idea) could help teachers deal with difficult students and discipline problems to consider the teacher's relational skills.