Have You Tried Building a Relationship? That Relationship Depends on Consequences

Have you tried building a relationship with the student?

That line can never be an appropriate reaction to student misbehavior.

When a student has done something serious and they've been sent out of the classroom, asking if the teacher has built a relationship with the student is never appropriate because what we have to understand about the teacher-student relationship is that it has a necessary context of authority where the teacher is respected and the teacher will be backed up if the the student challenges that authority.

And we don't want to make a big deal about authority.

We don't want to go on power trips or anything like that.

But it has always been the case historically in education that there's some backup behind teachers.

And what we're seeing right now with just the incredible number of students who are assaulting teachers, like I saw one in five UK teachers has been assaulted this year, according to a recent survey.

those numbers reflect the fact that that backup is not there anymore.

And the relationship is being asked to do a job that it was never intended to do and never capable of doing.

So yes, of course, we should build relationships with our students.

That's obvious.

That's what we all try to do.

That's what I did as a science teacher.

I, of course, did my best to build a relationship with students.

But we have to understand that that relationship has to be predicated on certain things other than the teacher's desire to build the relationship and the teacher's effort.

There has to be something on the part of the student.

And the best illustration I could give you of that comes from a couple of situations that I dealt with where we had like a clearly misogynistic parent who had passed on their misogyny to their son.

I saw like at least two different situations This where the parent the father would not even talk to the female teachers and then counselors and administrators in the room would only talk to males and would say things like My son does not have to listen to women does not have to listen to female teachers And you know like so the problem is that these teachers are telling my son what to do and clearly That can't work, right?

Like, there's no relationship that the teacher could build with that student that is going to work because the fundamental idea of respect and listening was just undermined by the parents' attitude and kind of worldview that women can't tell boys what to do.

Like, it was a very bizarre thing, and I was surprised when it came up both times.

But we have to recognize that that context matters.

And if as a society, we've created a context where kids don't really have to listen to teachers, they don't have to not hurt their teachers, there aren't really any consequences if they do, there's nothing that individual educators can do that can make that work.

I think that's the really toxic part of that message of, oh, did you build a relationship with a student?

It can't work because teachers need...

backup in order for that relationship to be a healthy one, right?

A healthy relationship is one in which the adults are in charge and the students enjoy coming to school.

The students do their part.

The students are respectful.

They're treated with respect, yes, but they're not allowed to run the place.

They're not allowed to turn the place into Lord of the Flies.

So let me know what you think about relationships and the context of them.