HOW TO BUILD HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS WITH YOUR STUDENTS

We often talk with the idea of the student we think we have in front of us. But who are we really teaching?

Let’s face it. Being able to capture the attention of our students and above all being able to keep it is becoming a titanic undertaking. Passing through the corridors of schools, you happen to hear the screams of teachers in hysteria or classes so noisy that you think the group is in there without any supervisor. Rudeness seems to reign and teachers find themselves more and more often in complex and emotionally complicated situations to manage.

So, where should we start? How can we act to trigger a mechanism that is no longer vicious, but virtuous in the teacher – pupil relationship?

The context

As each of us has now internalized and accepted, one of the major differences with the past is that the classes are made up of children who grew up in different places, cultures and systems. The collective approach to the group has become a distant memory and the only path we can take seems to be to establish healthy relationships with each member of our class. Working on the individual. We have to manage the individual to create positive synergies within a group.

Do we ever ask ourselves if we teach the student or the human being?

Very often our speech seems to have no impact because we do not take into consideration that our students already have personalities (or that they are being constructed) that are very different from one another. In this historical and social moment, standardized behaviors of children seem to have disappeared. It is no longer just ” a question of character ”.

Each pupil is building his own personality by transforming personal experiences into memories. A personal experience that, unlike years ago, varies greatly from family to family, from culture to culture, from school to school. The information present in each child’s memories creates and is creating personal beliefs and convictions.

What we see often is not what matters, let’s fix it in our mind and remember it especially in the most difficult situations to manage. If we want to generate a change in the pupil we have in front of us, if we want to trigger learning, we must necessarily change his/her beliefs, especially the negative ones and those that are pushing him to become the distracted child, the bad child, the rude child, and all the other labels that we often unwittingly give to our kids.

What can we do?

To build a healthy relationship with your pupils, you can start by doing this this:

1. Your pupil has lived through experiences that have left traces in his memory. He tries to find out which ones influence his behavior the most. Reinforce them if they are positive traces and try to modify them if they are negative.
2. The memories that he creates through experience are the episodes of his narrative. Be consistent with them. In other words, always start by accepting and taking what your student is saying as true and real.
3. His beliefs shape his communication and self-perception. Try, therefore, to communicate in different forms and ways. Do not assume that there is only one way to make your speech understandable to the different personalities you have to deal with every day.

On the following months we will continue taking about the topic, so remember to follow us on Facebook to keep track of the blog.

Thank you for reading!