"Students want to be listened to and respected as human beings with wants, desires, fears, and emotions" (Valenzuela, 1999).
Building positive relationships with our students is an essential task and a foundational component of good teaching. All students grow and thrive in the context of close and dependable relationships that provide love and caring, security, and responsive interactions. A positive teacher-student relationship built on trust, understanding, and caring will foster student’s cooperation and motivation and increase their positive outcomes at school.
Improving students' relationships with teachers has important, positive and long-lasting implications for both students' academic and social development. improving students' relationships with their teachers will not produce gains in achievement. However, those students who have close, positive and supportive relationships with their teachers will attain higher levels of achievement than those students with more conflict in their relationships.
Picture a student who feels a strong personal connection to her teacher, talks with her teacher frequently, and receives more constructive guidance and praise rather than just criticism from her teacher. The student is likely to trust her teacher more, show more engagement in learning, behave better in class and achieve at higher levels academically. Positive teacher-student relationships draw students into the process of learning and promote their desire to learn. Such students are willing to share their ideas and opinions and to recognize the accomplishments of other students.
Through many years of research, We as teachers have come to understand bullying as a relationship problem in which an individual uses power and aggression to control and distress another.
Every school's goal is promoting relationships and eliminating violence and bullying in school climate; Family, peer, and teachers relationships affect all aspects of student’s development – intellectual, social, emotional, physical, behavioral. When relationships are positive, students develop positive social skills, understanding, and confidence.
Students need constant coaching and support from teachers and family in learning the skills needed in a socially complex world. In my opinion teaching of different social skills may be needed to help students change their behavior; adults need to play an active role in organizing student’s groupings to provide opportunities for promoting positive interactions/relationships by setting them up for group assignments, sports, and lunch times. Teach how others feel when bullied and how to act differently next time; Students can be engaged in discussing together ways to reduce negative behavior to ensure there is no element of bullying.
Creating a classroom environment that fosters respect and welcomes diverse viewpoints and approaches to learning supports the growth and development of all learners in the classroom.
So what can teachers do to create a positive classroom climate?
Teachers and students alike must cultivate interpersonal skills and respect for other cultures.
Students who learn to work and play collaboratively with classmates from various cultures are better prepared for the world they face now and the world they will face in the future.
Teachers promote critical thinking when they make the rules of the classroom culture and enable students to compare and contrast them with other cultures. Teachers can seek information about students' home cultures by asking them to interview their parents about their lives as children, the stories they remember, favorite poems, and family recipes.
To create a positive climate for our classroom, I would recommend to focus on the following Elements:
-Student Voice: like for example; a current student could help a newcomer become familiar with the school and help other students engage in a range of activities to promote positive relationships and team building.
-Parent Engagement Schools recognize and support parents as partners in their children’s learning at home and at school like for example Inviting parents to volunteer in the classroom as reading mentors, math coaches, or storytellers will help students to know different cultures background. Teachers should communicate with parents on a regular basis by various means to inform about their child’s well-being and progress in learning, and any additional support that the child might need.
-Community Partnerships Schools engage diverse community groups to work with the school in a mutually beneficial way, as part of a whole school approach, to support students and parents by having “open house” for community members at which students can present and talk about their work.
-Learning Environment Schools provide students with a wide range of opportunities to learn, practice and demonstrate their learning. Students learn about the diversity of their world and come to understand the importance of learning and of being responsible. by teaching positive social skills through many activities and play teachers give positive feedback when a student behaves well.
-Social-Emotional Environment Schools promote fairness, equity, respect for all and a sense of belonging by developing supportive relationships with students, spending time with them individually when possible. Encouraging students to demonstrate respectful, empathetic behavior that promotes emotional well-being among their classmates. And this will create a safe, inclusive and accepting environment to support the achievement of all students.
-Physical Environment The school environment, inside and outside the building, is welcoming and makes the school a safe, inclusive and accepting place that is conducive to learning.
By ensuring that classroom displays reflect the diversity of the student population; students should be able to recognize themselves in their learning environment. And that promoting collaborative learning, student engagement in learning.
We as teachers improve our classroom climate by modeling positive, supportive communications skills and by teaching these skills to students. The great majority of interactions in classrooms are among students. We can influence and encourage respect in these interactions by teaching positive skills. Lessons in listening actively, using “I” messages, and negotiating conflicts show students how to treat each other with respect.
Most of many researches have focused on what children get out of positive relationships with adults. However, we contend that adults get something valuable out of the time and attention they expend to build these meaningful relationships too. First, as was mentioned, the students we build relationships with will be easier to teach, more compliant, and less likely to engage in challenging behavior. Second, We as teachers will feel more positive about our students skills, their effort. Third, students will begin to see the effect of positive relationship with teachers.
As students learn in the context of caring relationships with adults/teachers, they will become more skilled at building positive relationships with other children.
All in all providing a student with the opportunity to have a warm and responsive relationship with others means that you have the pleasure of getting to know the student as well and develop a positive classroom climate.
As students learn in the context of caring relationships with adults/teachers, they will become more skilled at building positive relationships with other children.
All in all providing a student with the opportunity to have a warm and responsive relationship with others means that you have the pleasure of getting to know the student as well and develop a positive classroom climate.
Sources:
1. Committee for children; Key Factors in Creating a Positive Classroom Climate, published on Sunday, August 12, 2012. Retrieved from
http://www.cfchildren.org/about-us/enewsletter/key-factors-in-creating-a-positive-classroom-climate on October 26,2016.
2. PROMOTING A POSITIVE SCHOOL CLIMATE: A Resource for Schools. Retrieved from
http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/parents/ResourceDocEng.pdf on October 26,2016.
3. Education.com, Building Positive Relationships, Retrieved from
http://www.education.com/reference/article/building-positive-relationships-students/ on October 26,2016.
4. American Psychological Association, Improving Students' Relationships with Teachers to Provide Essential Supports for Learning. Retrieved from
http://www.apa.org/education/k12/relationships.aspx on October 26, 2016.
5. Student-Teacher Relationships: Classroom Culture (Promoting Excellence for All) youtube video, Retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEI6zHI0KLg on October 26,2016.
6. Building Relationships and Creating Supportive Environments, Building Positive Relationships with Young Children. Retrieved from
http://csefel.vanderbilt.edu/modules/module1/handout5.pdf on October 26,2016.
7. Research for teachers, PREVENT BULLYING BY PROMOTING HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS article published on December, 2011. Retrieved from
http://www.etfo.ca/Resources/ForTeachers/Documents/Research%20for%20Teachers%20-%20Number%206%20-%20%20Prevent%20Bullying%20by%20Promoting%20Healthy%20Relationships.pdf on October 26,2016.
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