|
Relationships
While I do not want impose a hierarchy on the components that I discuss in this website, in Let’s Lead - Nīkānētān, we do put a timing precedence on the factor of relationships. People are more engaged when they respect and value their colleagues’ skills and knowledge, and feel that they are respected and valued in return. People are more engaged when they feel safe, physically and emotionally and cared for. People are more engaged when they trust that they will be supported in success and failure by those around them. People are more engaged when they are having fun. In other words, having strong and healthy relationships in the classroom creates a more engaging environment which then can lead to more effective learning. Therefore, in Let’s Lead – Nīkānētān, we focus on developing the relationships in our classroom before we worry about academics.
|
Trust
It is crucial that we all, students and teachers, like and trust each other for the best learning to take place. This means doing intensive work through activities designed to “break” the ice and barriers for as long as it takes in the beginning of the year and then continuously throughout the year. It also requires that we, as the teachers and adults, strictly govern our responses to students. In other words, we should not act like many of the other adults already in their lives. To create a more engaging environment, we are calm, consistent, caring all of the time, fun, and act in a respectful manner towards each of them. We are always striving to be as fair as possible, not just in our eyes but also in our students’, as a perception of unfairness can undermine the strong relationship we are developing. This perception of unfairness is also one of the reasons why we have sought to even the socio-economic imbalance that many of our students face.
|
|
Development
|
In LLN, we feel so strongly about this that we spend a significant amount of time in the beginning of the year just focusing on relationship building between everyone and continue to focus on it throughout the school year. Most of the students in our program have felt very little connection to their past schools, classmates, and teachers. We feel that this is one of the primary reasons they have previously had poor attendance. The relationships between all of the members of our classroom, including staff and students, lay the foundation for everything that takes place in our classroom. One of our main focuses is on developing a strong, healthy and happy relationship with each of our students and helping them to do the same with each other. Even our application process requires evidence of a relationship. During any tryout period, the students are not the only ones that are being examined. We ask the students to look carefully at the staff and decide if they can trust, respect and enjoy working with us.
|
Bank Account Analogy
The metaphor that I like to use regarding people’s relationship with each other is that of a bank account. To have a healthy bank balance, you need to spend time making deposits. The more you deposit, the better your account is and the more there is available to withdraw. Negative interactions are withdrawals. If you make withdrawals before you deposit anything or make too many withdrawals, your relationship account will be in debt and you will not be experiencing a healthy relationship. This is the situation that many of our students have been experiencing with other classmates and teachers prior to being in our class. We spend as much time as necessary in the beginning creating a healthy relationship account balance before we allow ourselves to make any withdrawals and we guide them toward the same goal with us and with each other. Our focus on relationship building is borne out by the results in our classroom and the research. Davis (2006) indicates that “adolescents benefit, both socially and academically, when they experience supportive relationships with their teachers” (p. 194). She goes on to say that “positive interpersonal relationships and classroom climates are among the most consistent, significant predictors of student motivation and achievement” (Davis, 2006, p. 196).
|
Takes Time
|
In Nikanetan, relationships form the foundation of our entire program. The relationships between the students, between the staff and between the staff and students. Relationship building takes time. You cannot expect to do one activity and presto, everyone in your class has a good relationship with everyone else including you. Solid, caring relationships need to be first on the agenda. If the time is taken in the beginning to lay a solid foundation of a caring relationship, other things like academics proceed much easier. Building relationships with students needs to occur on an individual basis. Each and every student needs to be listened to and interacted with as much as possible. One of the big issues facing schools these days is bullying. When a group of students have laid the foundation of relationships, it is far less likely that bullying will be an issue. This is not to say that class with healthy relationships will never have difficulties but any issues can usually be resolved and the relationships repaired.
|
How To Start
|
How does a teacher facilitate strong caring relationships in the classroom? The best time for this is at the very beginning of the year. Keeping in mind the bank account analogy, it is not very effective in any relationship to start with something that is difficult or too challenging. You want the group to experience success together in order to start down the path of strong relationships. This means that anytime we start with a new group, we need to take the time to develop the relationship before we start expecting students to trust us enough to work with us on academics. When a trusting relationship exists between students and each other and the teacher, they are more likely to take risks and be willing to be vulnerable. It is easier to push students out of their comfort zone and to tackle new challenges.
|
Befriending?
|
We have heard too much about beginning teachers being cautioned about not “befriending” students as if there was a law against teachers and students mutually respecting and liking one another. We are not talking about a teacher becoming a student’s pal and hanging out after school. We are talking about the students in your class mutually respecting and hopefully liking one another and you. When this exists between people, it is far more likely that an effective and trusting work environment will exist.
|
Couches & Circle Formation
One of the ways that we continue to facilitate and develop relationships in our classroom is by having no desks. Our main classroom is a circle of couches. There are two relationship building concepts present here. The first is the couches. Couches create an environment of physical closeness and comfort. Couches change the entire feel of a classroom into more of a family room at home. Even one or two couches or more comfortable chairs can start to create this atmosphere. More important than the couches is the circle arrangement. A circle is continuous. There is no beginning and no end. There is no one at the “front” of a circle. When our class forms a circle, everyone can see everyone. No one can hide behind someone else. Anytime we need to discuss or share things an entire class, regardless of where we are, we arrange ourselves in a circle. We never sit in rows or lines or any arrangement that indicates someone is more important than others. The circle also make it very obvious when someone is not paying attention as we are all facing each other at all times. Couches are not the only way to do it but we feel very strongly about the circle formation. A circle of reasonably comfortable chairs in the room is far more inclusive than rows of desks.
|
Sharing Time
|
One of the things we do as much as possible is we start each day with sharing time. What this means is that we are all sitting in our circle and students and staff who wish to share things about their lives raise their hands and are called on by other students to share a personal story. Most are usually just about current events that have happened to the students in the last few days. Sometimes, they are a bit more significant. In the beginning of the school year, we are lucky if one or two students share. Within a few weeks, we are usually having to impose a limit on how long sharing can go on and how many things one person can share each time. It is a great way for us all to get to know each other and renew our knowledge of each other. It is like a large group coffee time with everyone having an opportunity to share a funny or serious moment in their lives and to listen, to commiserate and to laugh with each other.
|
Fun
|
Another way to build relationships is to have fun with each other. There is nothing wrong with playing games and doing fun activities at school simply for the sake of having fun. When people have fun with each other, they get to know each other, barriers begin to come down and all of this fosters better relationships. It should not be looked at as time wasted. It should be built into the day and the week, at the beginning of the day, as a break, or as a way to end the day or week on a happy note. An effective way to demonstrate the effectiveness of punctuality it to start the day with fun activities. This starts your day on a happy note and encourages all of the students to arrive on time. One of the things we like to do at the start of every day after Sharing Time is to play different and appropriate party games for 15 to 20 minutes. There are some really great ones out there that lend themselves well to large groups and allow our students to share and learn about each other in a fun and enjoyable way.
Playing organized group games and having fun together can often be a more effective and enjoyable break for your students than recess. There are many reasons why lots of schools have tried to do away with recess. Recess is the time when bullying and other problems are more likely. There is no recess break in our program. Going outside or being inside and having active fun together as a class is likely more enjoyable for most, if not all, of your students and will continue to foster healthy relationships. Learning to recognize when your students have been working to long and/or your relationships are suffering and you need a recharge. Spontaneously taking your class and playing a game and having fun will go a long way to accomplishing this. Again, fun is never a waste of time. Active fun outside is even more effective. |
Camping
One of the quickest and most effective methods to building relationships between students and staff is to go camping. Throughout our careers, it has always been our goal to take our classes camping overnight as soon as possible in the school year. We will discuss more about camping and its impacts throughout this book. One of the largest impacts is on relationships. Preparing and eating meals together, sitting around the campfire singing songs and telling stories, playing wide and night games, waking up and being together first thing, and being outside in nature together. All of these things and more take place while camping and all of them put money in the relationship bank. There is a distinct difference in the way things are before and after a camping trip and it is all for the better. We can tell when our class has had too long between camping trips. It is our class restorer. it brings us back together and in balance with each other.
|
Thank-you Circle
|
Something that we introduce at the end of our very first camp in the second week of school is a thank-you circle. We all sit in our circle and one by one, we thank other people in our class for specific things they have done for us. We typically follow our class call on each other procedure. We make sure that everyone is aware that while some thank-you’s may be humorous, the intent is to thank someone, not to be funny. The person saying the thank you can thank a specific person, a group of people or the whole class for something they have done for that person.
|
Don't Worry About Not Being Perfect
|
It is not about being perfect in all of our dealings with students. It is about striving to be perfect. We do not pull of everything we talk about in this website all of the time. We are striving to pull off everything but since we are human, we often fall short. When our goal is to treat every student with respect before we expect them to treat us that way and to be forgiving before we expect them to forgive us, we begin the process of relationship building.
|
Sample Activities
Below are some activities that we do in our classroom to start develop relationships. A note of caution, just doing these activities or ones like them will not automatically create relationships within your group. You need to create and maintain a culture of relationships within your classroom throughout the school year and beyond. There are lots of activities like the ones listed below in the All Aboard Teamwork Training Book that is available for purchase through this website.
|
|
|
GROUPS is an activity that gets people moving and finding things out about each other in a fun interactive way. This activity is taken from the All Aboard Activity book that is available for purchase through this website.
|
|
WHAT ARE YOU DOING? is an Improv warm-up activity that is quick and easy to do and gets people thinking and acting.
|