by Calum Kimm.
When I started my journey to becoming a teacher, I had a single goal. To prove to myself that positive relationships within the classroom aided progress and in turn aided the aspirations of our students. I am still to this day a firm believer that when a student is allowed to enjoy a subject they thrive, not only in the short term (regarding progress 8 and targets) but in the long trajectory of their future.
We spend so much time focussing on why our students are not achieving their targets that often we forget about those who do achieve their targets and those who go against the odds to illustrate success. We as teachers can become so bogged down in chasing figures that occasionally we forget that these figures correlate to a thinking, feeling being, one that craves a positive relationship to help them feel safe and to help their progress improve. It is important that we celebrate the small successes that characterise their learning journey so we can set them up to enjoy the success that their future will hold; after all, if we teach our students to constantly crave more rather than how to celebrate small goals do we not simply teach them a fixed mindset? An unachievable one at that?
I attribute my personal mantra to my time spent as a rather insignificant student at secondary school, to my time spent hiding from my food tech teacher because we ‘did not get on’ and to the time that I truly understood what my future could have had in store for me. My (then) English teacher spoke to me at the start of year 10 about aspirations and expectations (something he went back to often at random eruptions throughout my key stage 4 years) and he lit something in me. I understood that he truly cared about my education, not in the sense that he wanted to meet his targets, but because he had a genuine personal interest in seeing that I succeed. We used to talk regarding my (then secret) love of poetry; something he decided to declare mid lesson one dreary Thursday morning, much to the detriment of my ‘social status’. I worked my socks off for my GCSE grades because I knew that I wanted to impress my English teacher, an individual who I had generated the upmost level of respect for. In a nutshell, the relationships that were generated within my schooling years helped to guide me on the path that I stand now. The first (and in my humble opinion) most important piece of advice I would give to any new teacher is to get to know your audience; after all, McDonalds know the demographic for their newly launched burgers.
I will leave you with a scholarly quote, a useful link for you to lull over and some food for thought. What do you most remember about school? An exciting well planned lesson or a teacher that you had a huge amount of respect for; one whom you built a positive relationship with and one whose name sticks with you, even now?
• “positive teacher student relationships help to Improved grades. Teachers who have a good relationship with their students report an improved performance in academics. This is because students can easily approach their teacher for help if they have a problem in a particular course, and also because a student is motivated to work harder if they know that their teacher genuinely looks out for them. The teacher can also come up with the best and most effective teaching method since they know their students well, instead of adopting a generic method that doesn’t work well.
• If a teacher is invested in their students’ lives, it is easy to know if a student is going through a difficult time. This is because the teacher can easily tell when the student is not behaving normally, or the student confides in the teacher because they trust them. The problem is then addressed instead of letting it grow and stressing the student.”