Chelsey
and I recently read 2 great articles on building positive relationships that I wanted
to share with our readers and talk about how we plan on implementing some of
these ideas at our school.
The first article
was titled, “The power of being Seen” by Holly Korbey. Korbey’s article
tells the story of a rural school in Nevada that was really struggling with making
student connections and, as a result was seeing very dismal graduation rates. This
school decided to take very proactive approach to building student
relationships and has seen their hard work payoff in rising graduation rates.
This school looks like it has similar demographics to our school Auburn, CA.
One thing that Chelsey and I
really liked in the article was the emphasis on knowing students names. We
thought that a great exercise we could do at our school was to have students
created a personalized name tent with the phonetic pronunciation of their name
in the homeroom on the first day of school. Students could then take these name
tents to all their other teachers during the first week and we could have
teachers read every name aloud to make sure they were pronouncing it correctly.
This school also takes a staff
meeting about 6 weeks into the school year to go over the entire roster of the
school to mark how many teachers have a connection with each student. Those
kids without many connections are then divided up amongst the staff so that
teachers can go out of their way to do some check-ins with those students. Our
staff actually did this last year! Well… sort of. We did the exercise in which
staff marked up rosters, but we never did the follow up activities. We think
that this year we could accomplish the follow up by alerting teachers which
students in their homerooms have very few teacher connections. These students
could become a focus for homeroom teachers.
The
second article we read was “6 Strategies for Building Better Student
Relationships” by Cicely Woodard. Woodard’s article gives some quick and
easy-to-implement activities that teachers can use to build relationships. They
were all pretty good, but there were 3 that Chelsey and I really thought would
fit into our homeroom’s this year.
1. Show and Tell:
I know, I know, you are thinking to yourself that this is a strategy that only
works with little kids, but we have to think about it differently. Woodard uses
the idea of “genius hour” in her ELA class and allows students to research
anything that find interesting. This might be a hobby like skateboarding, or a
rare disease that they have been diagnosed with. With the correct branding,
this strategy could work with all ages.
2. Switch up the Seating Chart often: We really liked Woodard’s approach to the seating
chart. She changes it every few weeks. Kids can request 3 kids they’d like to
sit with. Woodard looks through and determines the kids that aren’t selected
often and gives them priority to make sure they get to sit next to new kids that
they’d like to get to know.
3. Simply Listen:
This one is less a formal strategy and more of a paradigm shift. Woodard points
out that we don’t necessarily need to “keep a professional distance” between ourselves
and our students at all times. If we let out guard down a little they may do the
same. I know that I have made connections with students over a shared passion
of playing video games and other seemingly trivial matters. It might be a great
idea to have teachers share some of their more fun and non-academic hobbies
with students and ask them about theirs.
We also read two great articles about creating positive relationships with students. “4 Ways to Foster Positive Relationships with Students” and “The Key to Successful Classroom Management”. These articles had some great information that we are excited to share with everyone!
“4 Ways..” gives educators great ideas on how to quickly and easily create positive relationships with your students. The four ways include: Two minute talks, Create a class playlist, mix and mingle, and gab and go. These ideas all can take less than 10 minutes out of your class time or be extended to take up a longer period of time. Jeff has tried the create a playlist idea with his leadership students in the past. Students filled out a google form with songs they like and another student later created a Spotify playlist with a clean version of the song. Kids constantly requested him to play their class playlist and this made all students feel connected with the class. Another great idea is the gab and go. Students line up in two different lines facing each other. Students are given a topic to discuss and after a few minutes one line slides down and you talk with another partner. This is a great activity where you can use to know you questions or even discussions involving a book you are reading as a class. Chelsey is definitely going to try the Gab and Go in her room!
In the article “The Key to Successful..” They discuss 3 ways to create positive relationships. These 3 ways fall under the categories Establish, Maintain and Restore. The first section Establish talks about “banking time” with students. It’s important to make sure that you are making time to talk to each kid and create a good positive relationship right in the beginning. This sets you up for the rest of the year on a good note with each student. The next section is Maintain. This is another no brainer! It’s a great idea to continue to check in with your students. Something as simple as asking how they are doing is a great way to maintain a good relationship. Also remember, you should always strive for a 5-1 ratio of positive comments to negative ones. Finally Restore. Teachers need to remember that each day is a new day. Always start fresh in the morning, but don’t forget to discuss issues you have directly with students. Don't be afraid to apologize or discuss a negative interaction with a student. It will make you both feel better to have the air clear and you will both be able to more easily move on to work toward repairing that solid relationship.
We would definitely recommend reading either of these articles or even both! We learned a ton of great, easy information and strategies to start practicing in my classroom. These articles are both really connected to the video “Power of Relationships”. This video stresses the importance of being open, honest and transparent with kids. It’s important to talk with them, listen to them and create long lasting relationships with students.
Chelsey and I really enjoyed these strategies and are planning on sharing them with our Culture Committee as a cool way we can value-add to our homeroom program.
