Building Relationships with Students

Relationships with students are one of the most important things in the classroom. They lay the foundation for classroom management to establish a positive environment. These relationships also have a large impact on students and their achievement. As an educator, daily interactions are a way to establish these positive relationships.

A goal I have for creating these positive relationships with my students is to make them feel cared for and valued as individuals. I will accomplish this by having genuine interactions and conversations with each of my students every day. I want to establish a feeling of mutual respect with my students. It is important for them to feel respected within my classroom if I set the expectation for them to be respectful. To gain this respectful environment, I will model this for students as well as explicitly teaching students what it means to be respectful.

An important thing is to let students know you believe they can be successful. If you believe in them and have established that positive relationship with them, they will start to believe in themselves as well. I want to utilize these relationships to promote self efficacy in my students. Along with this, I want to set students up for success. I will be better able to do that with the foundation of a relationship. These relationships can cause students to appreciate you and like you as their teacher. This can go a long way in the classroom, especially by contributing to student achievement.

Positive relationships play directly into classroom management. To support the growth of relationships with my students, I will be constructive, especially with my corrections. Ultimately, I want students to be able to reflect on and learn from their actions. Each undesired behavior presents an opportunity for a teachable moment. This will give me the chance to help the student reflect on what they did and help them to make a better choice in the future. If I can get students to understand why I am correcting their behavior, then they are more likely to meet expectations in the future. Student behavior has also shown to be dependent on relationships and expectations. My classroom management plan includes spending time on creating these relationships and setting expectations to spend less time on managing disruptions and distractions.

Marzano has stated that students will resist rules and procedures along with the consequent disciplinary actions if the foundation of a good relationship is lacking. Without the relationship, students can become non-compliant, and they may feel as if they are not cared about. This can lead to deeper issues in the classroom.

It is crucial to be aware of the relationships that are created with students. As an educator, I will take a concerted effort to build relationships with each of my students.

Good relationships in the classroom are a necessity.