Building relationships with students is an important part of helping them progress throughout the school year.
While I understand that we must spend the majority of our days focused on academics, we also need to find ways to sneak in relationship building activities….especially when we are remote learning. No, I’m not talking about those team building games that admin always make us play the first day of teacher workdays as ice breakers… I absolutely hate those by the way, have yet to find one that doesn’t make me want to resign. No, I’m talking about embedding relationship building into every day.
If we are in person, that can be pretty easy. Greeting every student by their name every morning, making time to ask about student favorites like favorite color, favorite band, favorite food, whatever you can fit into the lesson that day. Make note of students favorite things. You can use these types of things to make connections with students, like using a student’s love for oranges and incorporating that into a bonus math problem. When students realize that you are listening to them when they tell you things about themselves, it helps them to feel seen and beings the relationship building process.
There are lots of ways to build relationships.
Another option in building relationships with your students is to respond to journal prompts or personal writings with a note showing that you read their essay. Or when you talk to the student, mention how their writing reminded you of something else that was good. Making connections helps students to feel connected to you. These connections build a community within the classroom, which is inclusive of everyone.
For example, I had a student who loved to write about Star Wars. I don’t think I have ever watched a full Star Wars movie all the way through. The only characters I can think of right now are Chewy and Yoda. When I mentioned to this student that my husband loves Star Wars and knows all about the characters he was writing about, that student’s eyes lit up and he started explaining all about the Star Wars universe. He gave me more information than I ever wanted to know. All of a sudden, that student had a connection to me, and possibly more important, something that he could teach me.
This leads me to my next suggestion about building relationships with students…. Give them something that they can teach you. This requires some vulnerability on our part…. Teachers are used to having to know all the things for their students. Especially for those really hard to reach students, allowing them to be the expert helps them build their confidence that the knowledge that they have is worthwhile. Teachers know how awesome it is to teach something to someone else. By allowing our students to teach us something, we give them that gift of imparting appreciated knowledge on others. That feeling is hard to come by before your 30s if we are completely honest, so that is a big gift for students.
My favorite way to build relationships….
One of my favorite ways to build relationships with my students is through using my Feelings Journal at least a few times a week. Sometimes I use it to help students identify their emotions. Other times I use it as a morning journal prompt to help me get in touch with what is going on in the lives of my students. That help me keep my lessons and teaching relevant.
When we switched to remote in March, that was a lot harder to do, so I made my Feelings Journal digital, which has made a big different in my ability to build relationships with students. If you are looking for an easy way to form relationships with students in person or remotely, go and check out my Feelings Journal by clicking the picture. For more examples of how I used it to save my sanity, check out How 5 Minutes a Day Saved My Sanity.
