Teacher -Student Relationships
WE MATTER.
"IN SHORT, THEY'RE NOT ASKING FOR AGENCY OVER CONNECTION; THEY'RE ASKING FOR AGENCY AND CONNECTION."
-ERIC TOSHALIS
AUTHOR OF MAKE ME! UNDERSTANDING AND ENGAGING STUDENT RESISTANCE IN SCHOOL
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When considering the cultural contexts and backgrounds students may have when in a teacher’s classroom, teachers may feel overwhelmed or even helpless with facing the reality of various responsibilities and culturally responsive mindsets required to meet student emotional and social needs (see Teacher Well-being page). As students reveal more of their testimony or bare more of their identity in the classroom, teachers may increasingly feel the symptoms of compassion fatigue, or secondary traumatic stress. However, after reading Case #2, it is evident that these relationships that promote student agency within school contexts are pivotal to addressing student well-being.
COMPASSION FATIGUE
(or secondary traumatic stress)
the natural consequent behaviors and emotions resulting from knowing about a traumatizing event experienced by a significant other— the stress resulting from helping or wanting to help a traumatized or suffering person
Teacher and student well-being go hand-in-hand, and the foundation of the Prosocial Classroom Model rests primarily on the teacher’s social and emotional competence (SEC). When teachers have a higher SEC, teachers exhibit more effective classroom management and curriculum that promotes social and emotional role modeling behavior. Teachers with higher SEC demonstrate high self-awareness and social awareness, exhibit prosocial values and responsible decision making, and manage their emotions along with relationships with others (See What about SEL? For more information on these characteristics.) When these elements are not as strong, teacher burnout is likely to occur, which typically results from emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, or feelings of lacking personal accomplishments.
The cycle of influence between students and teachers greatly affects the well-being of both parties. Student perceptions of teachers directly correlate with academic interest or motivation; likewise, teacher expectations directly contribute to student treatment, which circles back to student motivation and self-perception in the classroom. An important aspect of student-teacher relationships rests on the teacher’s ability to express and process negative emotions, both from students' and the teacher’s personal feelings. This responsibility of emotional regulation easily becomes another source of stress that teachers experience in the field, especially regarding student misbehavior. When students resist in the classroom, teachers must first understand the key to correction is connection to the students, in which connection begins with establishing trust. Trust is earned, not given on the first day of school.
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T R U S T
REGARD
when teachers express interest in students and demonstrate care and willingness to connect to students beyond required responsibilities
RESPECT
when teachers provide students with agency and are aware of the balance between connection and privacy
INTEGRITY
when teachers demonstrate consistency and justice
COMPETENCE
when teachers are organized and exhibit strong leadership as well as communication skills
Case Study #3: Christchurch Earthquake
In February of 2011, the aftershock of a magnitude 6.3 earthquake hit Christchurch, New Zealand, which killed and severely injured several people. This was five months after a magnitude 7.1 earthquake had hit close to Christchurch in September 2010. The communities were devastated and challenged to cope with a multitude of trials and issues.
Ōpāwa Primary School specifically sought opportunities and outlets to make their school foundation of community come together during this time. To provide support and take action, the school decided to focus primarily on individual and collective well-being by prioritizing student learning in the context of the community.
As the school prepared to re-open, they made sure that families were contacted to be aware of the earthquake’s impact personally. Teachers came together and re-evaluated what learning was most important given the context. Teachers also received access to free counseling services as extra support. Using the resources provided by the Ministry of Education as well as several other joint initiatives developed by the local community, students and their families began to take part of the school’s well-being curriculum through interactive games, play-based learning, and inquiry-based art projects. Although the disaster devastated the community in irreparable ways, the community also came to understand the power of unity as well as the influence of schools in promoting well-being among students, their families, and the community altogether.
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CALL FOR CULTIVATION
"CULTIVATING COMMUNITY"
In cultivating a community focused on wellness, we must first deconstruct the pre-conceived notions of “leaving our feelings at the classroom door”. The classroom is not solely a place of procedures and curriculum; the classroom is full of emotions and experiences that must be nurtured to create a supportive community and a positive climate. For both students and teachers, this means welcoming our feelings and lives outside the classroom into the classroom, which includes the celebrations and wounds we carry with us. As teachers, this is moving beyond empathy into the cultivation of community through inviting students to integrate their life experiences with the classroom atmosphere, always. As teachers, this means extending the expectation for students to only be vulnerable for solely academic purposes (receiving new information) to also welcoming students to be vulnerable for personal matters as well (engaging funds of knowledge). As teachers, this vulnerability applies as well.
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“In critical pedagogy, our students can’t be the only ones expected to share their lives, the only ones who are supposed to listen.” -Jaye Thiel
While rules and procedures should never take priority over well-being in the classroom, these elements of classroom management are crucial to cultivating a classroom community. Too often, teachers remove the community aspect from creating rules in the classroom. In doing so, students are presented with a complicated and detached system of organization that holds no meaning or ownership to the ones who are called to abide. When students are instead involved in the process of classroom rules, they not only establish a sense of belonging, students are also aware of clearly defined expectations. Extending this idea of student voice and choice, cultivating a community in teacher and student relationships can also be refined by asking students, “What do you expect from your teacher?”
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Classroom Rules:
1. Take care of yourself.
2. Take care of others.
3. Take care of this place.
Teacher expectations are crucial when addressing well-being in the classroom community. High expectations are clearly known to influence students individually as well as the classroom atmosphere. With that being said, the cultivation of a classroom community requires teachers who cultivate meaning and empathy, but also take on the responsibility of being warm demanders, or figures who confidently carry high expectations of students and engage students in their excellence regardless of socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, or any other determinant of student or school demographics. Warm demanders refuse to allow labels placed on students to lessen their abilities to achieve and excel in and beyond the classroom.
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“Teachers have to care so much about ethnically diverse students and their achievement that they accept nothing less than high-level success from them and work diligently to accomplish it…. This is a very different conception of caring than the often-citing notion of ‘gentle nurturing and altruistic concern’ which can lead to benign neglect under the guise of letting students of color make their own way and move at their own pace.” -Geneva Gay
Footnotes
Level, N., Mathis, E., & Mayworm, A. (2017). School mental health is not just for students: Why teacher and school staff wellness matters. Rep Emot Behav Disord Youth, 17(1), p. 6-12.
Powell, M. A., Graham, A., Fitzgerald, R., Thomas, N., & White, N. E. (2018). Wellbeing in schools: What do students tell us? The Australian Educational Researcher, 45(4), pp. 515-531.
Toshalis, E. (2015). “How was I supposed to know?” In Michael Sadowski (Ed.), Make me!: Understanding and engaging student resistance in school (pp. 253-274). Harvard Education Press.
Ormandy, S. (2014). Wellbeing and the curriculum: One school’s story post-earthquake. Teachers and Curriculum, 14(1), pp. 3-11.
Thiel, J. (2014). Allowing our wounds to breathe: Emotions and critical pedagogy. In S. Jones (Ed.), Writing and teaching to change the world: Connecting with our most vulnerable students (pp. 36-48). Teachers College Press.
Smith, D., Fisher, D., & Frey, N. (2015). Better than carrots or sticks: Restorative practices for positive classroom management. ASCD.
Delpit, L. (2013). “Multiplication is for White people”: Raising expectations for other people’s children. The New Press.
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