What does it mean to be relational as a teacher? How will you interact with your students to accomplish this?
Being relational as a teacher means consciously working on building a relationship with each student through consistent, positive interactions. It means interweaving what I know with who I am so that students feel that they are interacting with and learning from a real, live human being. If I can create a bond between me and my student, if I can make them feel that I really care about them and their learning, they will work harder for me and take more risks which I need them to do in order to learn.
Some ideas I have for building relationship:
* personalized comments/feedback on work, not just letter grades
* finding positive ways to deal with classroom discipline/behavior issues like restlessness, chattiness, boredom.
* avoid bond-destroying behavior like shaming or humiliating students in front of others
* model respect by treating each student as well as I would treat any adult
* when appropriate, sharing stories about myself
* eye contact, active listening
* include sense of humor, fun, silliness in the class
* smile! lots of people don't
Hi Shannon,
ReplyDeleteOnce again I enjoyed reading your blog post. Your response about being relational is very insightful. I especially liked your list of ideas for building relationships. Those are all excellent ideas. Isn't it amazing that we need to remind people of the importance of smiling? That smile really does set a positive tone for the class/day, etc. Nice job.
Wanda