Relationships — key to classroom culture

I have just had breakfast with a wonderful colleague, Anne Wilson, who I had worked with quite some time back in my career. Anne had worked as a Behaviour Support consultant, while I was a primary/elementary principal, and she was tasked with supporting teachers and leaders with students whose behaviour was very challenging.

‘Challenging’ is an interesting word, factual, but understated. Anne and I shared time supporting some extremely anxious, angry or disturbed kids and their teachers. Distress, from students and their teachers, was often at the forefront of our work, but the thing we enjoyed talking about most, was the broader issue of school culture and how we could work more in prevention, rather than crisis, mode. I like the analogy of taking the ambulance to the top of the cliff; to work pre-emergency, rather than constantly picking up broken kids at the base.

This morning Anne and I were talking about what we wished new teachers knew about setting up their classroom and culture. Our conversation particularly focused on the importance of building effective relationships in classrooms and included:

• When facing a new class try to learn the names of students as soon as possible and to glean at least one fact about each of them. This may be about their interests, pets, family etc and serves to make connections with individuals. Research shows that the relationship between teacher and student is crucial to students’ well-being and has an impact upon academic achievement.
• Share something about yourself, appropriate to students’ developmental levels of course, and preferably something humorous. Anne’s youngest grand-daughter has just started school and when asked what she liked about her teacher, her response was, “She makes me laugh — she says funny things”.
• Make sure to interact with the quieter students as they can be overlooked. Whenever possible write individual messages, not just about their work but about their hobbies, interests e.g. “Has your bird learned any new words lately?” Interaction via illustrations can be used for the younger students.
• Establish rules, boundaries and routines as quickly as possible. A calm atmosphere helps students to feel safe and to settle. Work WITH your class to develop these, they are the ones who most need to ‘own’ them and to respond to them. Also make sure you follow them too!
• Regularly revisit the ‘rules’ (or How we behave in our classroom’ guidelines). Reviewing these guidelines is an opportunity to reinforce what works. Use self and peer assessment and reflection to help students self monitor and set goals. Work with the whole class to establish targets for improvement and remember that young people particularly, do not automatically know how choose an appropriate behaviour for a context. Our role is to teach, facuilitate, role model and protectively interrupt to support social skill development.
• Endeavour to establish honest, respectful and friendly interactions with students’ parents. Such encounters enhance the well-being of students. Positive parents encourage their children to value education. If one looks back on one’s own education, inevitably one can remember a teacher or teachers who had a positive impact and even inspired and encouraged one’s career path. Similarly, as parents, one can recall a teacher or teachers who encouraged their children in a field of endeavour, or helped them through difficult times. The work of a teacher is so much more than just teaching.

What would you add to this advice for new teachers post?

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