Is the relationship with the teacher the most important thing in improving teen success?
“What students lack in school is an intellectual relationship or conversation with the teacher”.
William Glasser
I have to say that I love this quote and for me, it is the answer to everything when it come to education. A good relationship can heal a lot. Don’t you remember working for the teachers you liked and not for the ones you didn’t? It’s human nature.
However, for most schools this appears to be the last thing on the agenda. Don’t get me wrong, I am not blaming the schools or the teachers, the problem is the system, a system that put measurement above relationships.
I believe that relationships are the key to any long-lasting change. If we want to influence and impact the next generation then we must ensure that we build our relationships with them over anything else.
Relationships vs Measurement in Schools
It is so easy for us to focus on measurement, behaviour and attitude. So easy for us to look outside and blame a young person for a result that we find undesirable. It a takes a strong, courageous person to look inside and say, “What am I doing that is not allowing this person to shine?”
Our interactions should not be based on how to get this person to do what you want but by asking whether what you are about to do is going to harm or damage the relationship.
To influence a young person we must be in what is known as a sphere of influence. As a teacher, a parent or employer, we need to be in this sphere if we are to effect any change and support this young person to be who we know they can be. We can only do this if we have a strong relationship with them.
A strong relationship can do ten times more than any rewards or punishment can.
Our relationship with them should be based upon seeing a real human being and all the potential within, not just what they do. We should see the qualities in them and not just the behaviour in front of us. These relationships must be based on trust, understanding and equality. So often, adult/young person relationships are based on the adult having power, no trust and the adult having little understanding. How can we expect our young people to grow up as conscious, giving citizens if we treat them with mistrust and contempt?
Change only happens when someone cares enough about themselves and others to want to change.
And that can only happen when we care about a young person more than they hate themselves. We show this by putting the relationship with them above all else.
The power of a relationship – links to education
Can a teacher save a child?
I was recently reading an article by Johann Hair that he was prompted to write after watching Jamie’s Dream School. In this article he talks about how he hated secondary school and being told what to do, so he dropped out the whole system, only to jump back in when a lecturer at college took the time to really get to know him and support him.
Hair states, “When I was 16 and out of school, the vision of my future shrivelled and what remained consisted of fantasies of being discovered. It is like when you drop out of school and people tell you that you are no good, you begin to set yourself up to fail even further. “
He goes on to say that when this certain teacher told him he was able and capable and took the time to figure out why he was resistant about education and found a way to get through to him, his life changed.
That teacher and his determination to get through and have a relationship with him restored his faith in education, adults and the word on a whole.
What Hair decodes from this experience and watching Jamie’s dream school is,
- That all the badly behaved, naughty kids should not all be placed together in one group. If there are only a few of them in one group, the rest of the class influence better behaviour, whereas if you put them all together they just encourage each other. Hair cites information from North Carolina, where no school can have more than 40% of their kids on free school meals and no more that 35% who are a grade or more below the expected level in reading and maths. Within a decade, they have gone from one of the most underperforming districts to one of the highest performing districts.
- You must make these children feel like you care about them and that they are important. He believes that one-to-one work with an adult that cares is vital in improving their performance.
I have to say I agree with him wholeheartedly. However, I have this nagging doubt in the back of my mind that what we need to do with our system is to be more realistic. More realistic about the time available and the fact that some children need something different from their education. Supporting the person to succeed in their own way is far more important than the measurements we put on our children and those that work with them.
So what can you do in your school with your students to put the relationship before any measurement else.
“… it is the answer to everything when it comes to education”.
Hmm … I’m going to have to disagree with that 100%.
In my view at least, the answer to everything when it comes to education is to take responsibility for our own education and to encourage our children to do the same. That’s a concept that simply doesn’t suit the school system, in my experience, no matter how hopeful Mr. Hair might be that a leopard will change its spots..
“Education” and “school” are not synonyms. They never have been and never will be. Indeed, since the advent of the “Digital Communications Revolution”, schools have become the laggards of the education world. Most of them are still peeing around over whether or not to use learning ideas and technology that I’ve been happily using without a second thought for an entire decade (so have most people in the world at large but they probably don’t recognise it as “education” because they’re not sitting in a classroom!).
As somebody who went to school in the 1950s and 60s when schools were at least genuine places of learning and relevant to the requirements of the existing society, who knows first hand the huge amount of attention and energy it takes to make sure a child is academically successful in the school system without being psychologically damaged (my daughter) and who has experienced first hand what can happen when a child is free to learn at the speed of thought through electronic media rather than being required to sit in a classroom waiting to be taught at somebody else’s whim what that other person tells him he should know (my son), it’s impossible for me not to suggest that the “something different” some children need is for their parents or other people who care about them to snap out of their enthrallment to an educational methodology that was designed for a society that no longer exists; that historically, in terms of helping our children reach their potential as human beings, has a failure rate of about 95%; and that continues to defy everything neuroscience tells us about how human beings learn best. I don’t hesitate to suggest that, in 2012, nobody needs to go to school to get an education and perhaps if all those alleged “dropouts” were to be re-classified as “dissatisfied customers”, that might be more apparent.
And that’s not even considering that so called “school reform’” has been ongoing since the 1970s. Perhaps it may be worth pondering on the idea that, if schools could have been fixed they could have been fixed by now and maybe it would be bad for business if they were.
Thanks Bob always love your alternative view
Thx