this goal for yourself, reflect on a time in your life when you set a goal that would take a considerable amount of time and effort to accomplish. Think about how determined you were to achieve this goal and the sense of accomplishment you felt when it was met. Recall some of the challenges or roadblocks that you had to overcome in order to meet your goal. Think about the strength, mental fortitude, or resources you enlisted to overcome these obstacles. Remember the time it took, and remember how you got through it by anticipating both the reward of finishing what you started and the ways in which your life would be enhanced as a result.
Now picture the students you have difficulty with, and use this same mindset of determination to forge positive and trusting relationships with them. Parallel the goal of establishing a relationship with them to the goal you have already brought to fruition through your hard work and willpower. Tell yourself that since you were capable of investing the necessary amount of time, energy, physical effort, and mental effort into that goal, you are also capable of investing what is necessary to build a positive and trusting relationship with your students who may be at risk. This is how you develop a relationship-building mindset.
Because this is not easy, remember the resources and supports that were available to you when you were going through the process of accomplishing your previous goal. Think of any resources or supports that are available as you face challenges building relationships with challenging students. As you set out to do this, you may also draw motivation from the feelings of elation that you experienced when you met your previous goal. Envision the mutual benefits as the reward of building those relationships, and use that anticipation of the end result to keep working, despite the difficulty or challenges that will arise. Do not allow yourself to give up!
Once you have developed the mindset, then you must put it into action by showing students that you truly care about them. The next chapter covers this crucial aspect of engaging with students at risk.
Use the following four questions to reflect on what you have learned in this chapter. You may choose to journal about them or discuss them with a partner or small group to gain further insights.
1. Think about a big accomplishment that you achieved. What were some of the difficulties you had to endure or some of the challenges you had to overcome? What made it worth it to keep going?
2. Ask yourself if you are interested in or committed to building relationships with your challenging students. Think about a student you have had difficulty connecting with. What makes it difficult to build a relationship with him or her? What are some of the challenges?
3. What are some of the benefits that you would like to see as a result of developing trusting relationships with your students?
4. After developing a relationship-building mindset, how will you stay committed to connecting with your challenging students?
Following are four action steps you can take right now to apply what you have learned and help students at risk in your classroom.
1. Identify one of your students at risk and tell him or her that you are going to commit to helping him or her be successful this school year.
2. Ask the student for three ways in which you can help him or her succeed in your class.
3. Based on the response, list several things that you may have to sacrifice to support the student. For example, you may have to sacrifice eating lunch with your colleagues once per week to eat lunch with the student to get to know him or her better. Or, you may have to come in to work a half hour early or stay late once a week to tutor the student. Sometimes, to truly commit to a goal means making sacrifices in other areas.
4. Based on your knowledge of your challenging students, anticipate several barriers they may put up to avoid building a positive relationship with you. To prevent giving up on these students, reflect on difficult times you have endured. Use the reproducible “Developing a Relationship-Building Mindset” to help you through the process of changing your mindset.
Developing a Relationship-Building Mindset
Respond to the following prompts to help you discover how to develop a relationship-building mindset.
1. Write down two of the most difficult or challenging goals you have accomplished so far in your life. Who helped or supported you, and how did that relationship help you accomplish your goals?
A.
B.
2. Identify a student who is facing challenges or difficulties and how building a relationship with him or her might help this student succeed.
3. What “ships” would you need to burn or excuses would you need to eliminate in order to develop a relationship-building mindset so you can be a more positive influence on students at risk in your classroom?
Building Bridges © 2019 Solution Tree Press • SolutionTree.com Visit go.SolutionTree.com/behavior to download this free reproducible.
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Show That You Care
Unfortunately, there is a lack of empirical research that addresses how teachers can develop positive and caring relationships with students (Murray & Greenburg, 2006). The field of education needs systematic inquiry into how teachers establish and maintain positive, caring relationships with students (Woolfolk-Hoy & Weinstein, 2006). If students are going to reach their full academic potential, teachers and administrators must establish relationships with them and foster a nurturing climate by exhibiting behaviors that students perceive as warm and caring.
Many teachers enter the profession because they care about students and want to use their skills to help their students succeed academically. Most educators also share a genuine concern for the well-being of children and enjoy working with them. We are all expected to conduct ourselves in a caring manner and display caring behaviors. However, some of us need to improve our ability to see things from a student’s perspective rather than always from our own, elder vantage point.
In this chapter, we will explore what the research says about providing a caring environment in the classroom, how that caring environment plays out in the real world, as well as questions for reflection and action steps you can take to ensure students know you care about them.
What the Research Says
The National Association of Elementary School Principals defines school climate as the feelings and attitudes a school environment elicits (Loukas, 2007). Although the concept of school climate is difficult to put into words, “most researchers agree that it is a multidimensional construct that includes physical, social, and academic dimensions” (Loukas, 2007, p. 1). This includes how students, staff, and community interact with each other and the approaches they use to solve problems in school (Nor & Roslan, 2009). Research reveals four strategies that teachers can keep in mind to help students know that they care: (1) take a learner-centered approach, (2) display caring behaviors, (3) use a responsive
