Student-Teacher Relationships

Creating a positive learning environment through good classroom design is critical, but of far greater importance is how a teacher relates to the students. A well-designed classroom with colorful, appealing displays and great seating arrangements are all for naught if a teacher relates poorly to the students. Conversely, positive teacher-student relationships can make up for a poorly designed classroom or a less than ideal room assignment. Building positive teacher- student relationships is, in fact, so important that it is arguably the most important factor contributing to the success of students. Students who feel respected by their teacher are more likely to be compliant, respectful, and open to learning. While students who feel disrespected are more likely to be defiant, disrespectful, and resistant to learning.

The great value of fostering good teacher-student relationships, therefore, cannot be overstated.The issues of human behavior are complex and isolating the variables that contribute to positive relationships is not always straightforward. Personality, teaching style, learning style, and presence all play a role, but how and to what degree? We do not pretend to have all the answers,but there ARE common strategies used in the classrooms of highly effective teachers. Strategies that regularly and consistently develop positive student relationships, that can be learned and developed by all educators.

Teaching Rules and Procedures

Learning allows a student to modify his behavior to suit a situation and to be more successful – academically and behaviorally. In my seminar, I will provide a very powerful format for you to follow; I’ll help you develop your lesson plan of rules and procedures. Teaching to rules and procedures will promote consistency and help your students learn all the skills they need to be successful in your classroom.

The first month, first week, and first day of school are critical to classroom management. Successful teachers devote a great deal of time during the first few weeks of school to carefully teaching rules and routines. Instead of telling and posting, they teach and practice crucial classroom routines just as they would academics. The 180 school days in a year are made up of routines, procedures, and rules to govern teacher-student relationships. They set the foundation of a structured environment all children need in order to learn and all teachers need in order to teach. Researchers have long investigated the most common rules and routines addressed by successful teachers at both the elementary and secondary level. We asked veteran teachers from around the country to help develop and field test lesson plans for those common rules and routines critical to successful classroom function.

How to Respond to Melodrama

In disciplinary matters, timing is everything. So is an understanding of the emotional state of students who are challenging your authority. When I say timing is everything I mean early intervention is critical.I teach a powerful strategy that relies on the contingent withdrawal of attention from a student exhibiting emergent (low level) misbehavior. It is a POWERFUL response to shutting down problem behavior and a powerful refinement of a century old strategy, which affects powerful, dramatic, and positive impact on the contemporary classroom. It is unique in that in addition to allowing for the contingent withdrawal of attention, the basic principles of academic remediation are incorporated into the process, where the teacher stops the student, re-teaches, checks for understanding, and sends the student back to work independently. Students are given a prompt, allowed to self-correct, and then asked to identify the interfering behavior – all while never leaving the academic environment.

Classroom Ecology and Management

The classroom environment can have a profound impact, good or bad, on student learning and achievement. The design, layout, seating arrangement, and lighting can go a long way toward setting the tone and atmosphere of a classroom. Therefore, it is not surprising that a primary goal of educators is to create and establish a positive learning environment in the classroom, as much depends on it. The last phrase is a key admission, because teachers often have to work in less- than-ideal environments under less-than- ideal circumstances. The experienced educator is all too aware of these limitations, which routinely include events and situations beyond immediate control (e.g., room size, broken air conditioner, lack of resources, etc.).

In this seminar, we’ll focus on what can be used and apply what we have. Regardless of your situation, at least one principle remains constant: the physical design of your classroom must take into account both learning and behavioral consequences. It is natural for teachers to focus on the former at the expense of the latter, but in fact, both are essential and interdependent. For example, some seating arrangements that are “optimal” for learning can actually invite misbehavior, depending on the classroom “chemistry” and emotional maturity of the students. Misbehavior, in turn, interferes with the desired goal of learning. It is of vital importance, then, for the teacher to consider how the physical design of his or her classroom supports not only learning but appropriate student behavior.