‘Good relationships with the students’: It’s an end product, not a process.
One of the most common bits of advice given to teachers struggling with behaviour is that they need to ‘build good relationships’ with the class. When you have a ‘good relationship’, so the logic goes, you will start to figure out those behaviour difficulties. Maybe the person giving you this advice will tell you that the same class ‘behaves really well for me’. That always makes you feel better, doesn’t it?
Unsurprisingly I have a problem with this. This seems to be one of those ‘targets’ that, while desirable, is not necessarily actionable (like telling a student to ‘develop their analysis’ on the end of some written work). I think when it comes to good teacher-student relationships in a class, we confuse with the end product with the process required to get there. The good relationship is the end product that we desire — it’s a not a ‘process’ in and of itself.
Usually, when teachers are advised to work on their relationship with a class, this often involves some of the following things:
· Engaging with the students interests outside of the classroom. For example, if you’re lucky enough to teach in Castleford here in West Yorkshire, you should definitely make a point to discuss rugby league with the students at all available opportunities.
· Having more of a ‘sense of humour’ with the students — maybe don’t take yourself so seriously. Loosen up and don’t get so stressed out when they’re not doing the work.
· Don’t make a fuss out of all the small incidents of misbehaviour that you encounter in the lesson. Let a few things slide. Try and be really positive at all times. Make sure you identify the good aspects of behaviour from tricky students and focus on those.
· Jazz up the content a bit to make it more ‘engaging’. Sack off boring lessons about the Glorious Revolution and just teach about war, innit.
I’m being a little facetious perhaps, but you get the idea.
I think this sort of advice is often quite unhelpful. It may (repeat, may) lead to better relationships with some students, but it might not sort out the issues of behaviour in the class, and by avoiding grasping the nettle of needing to teach these kids hard content, it probably won’t improve achievement. As a collection of bits of advice, they’ll probably lead to you having lower expectations of pupils rather than higher ones. In their defence, individually, some of these bits of advice aren’t necessarily bad ideas — but they aren’t a panacea to your problems either. It’s a good idea to praise good behaviour (narrate the positive) but it’s no good letting poor behaviour slide. It’s not ideal to give the appearance of being stressed out in front of a class (although arguably it’s a perfectly understandable human reaction that happens from time to time because teachers are people and not robots). I think lots of history topics are really interesting in their own right, but I appreciate the need to ‘sell it’ a bit from time to time to a class of reluctant teenagers and that I might need to persuade them of the value of learning about the Glorious Revolution.
In addition, if you’re a new teacher in a school, or a trainee teacher, you won’t have the ability to build those strong relationships straight away. These things take time. It should not be a condition of the lesson that behaviour is good only if you’ve built a good relationship with the class.
By contrast, I think there are quite a few things that teachers do that do help to build ‘good relationships’ even if it doesn’t superficially appear as though that is what is happening. For example:
· Having high expectations of what every student can achieve.
· Having a calm and orderly classroom environment where rules of participation are respected and no one personality or small set of personalities dominates.
· Focusing on teaching really challenging content and letting your own enthusiasm for the subject shine through.
· Follow the whole school behaviour policy (assuming you’ve got one, and I know that some schools can be slack on this, or have behaviour policies that are designed to deter teachers from using it) consistently and fairly, without playing favourites or avoiding challenging the tricky students because they might kick off.
· Knowing your stuff as a teacher, both in terms of the content and assessment framework of your subject, so that students have confidence in you that you know what you’re doing.
· Tackling instances of poor behaviour head on so that everyone is clear about what is and isn’t acceptable in the classroom (what you permit, you promote, and all that).
I’ll be honest and say that after 13 years as a teacher, I have really good relationships with some classes, and rocky ones from time to time with others. I am not a perfect behaviour manager — sometimes I get it wrong. I think that’s probably true of all teachers, even the so-called ‘sick teachers’. Where I face more challenging situations, I need to constantly try and refine my approach to bring about improved behaviour, and, therefore, learning. But I’m not going to compromise on the core standards that I expect, and the school expects, of everybody, in the name of building better relationships. That does nobody any favours at all.
PLEASE NOTE: Andrew Old has written a very good blog on this very subject from last year that I highly recommend here.
