Teach like a champion 3.0: 63 techniques that put students on the path to college - Lemov Doug 2021

Principle 5: Teaching well is relationship building
Five themes: Mental models and purposeful execution

A common belief among teachers is that they must build relationships with students before they can make progress teaching them. “Students won't care what you say,” an oft-repeated aphorism goes, “until they know that you care.” The presumption is that students can't learn from someone who doesn't care about them and the result is often teachers seeking to connect with students and show their caring so they can teach them. That statement is informed by good intentions, but still mistaken in important ways. Should students know and feel that we care about them? Absolutely. Do relationships matter? Yes, of course—often immensely. But the assertion that no teaching can happen until a relationship exists is inaccurate,¹⁹ in part because teaching well is the most effective way to show a student that you care and to establish a relationship with them in the first place.

Recognizing that relationships matter is the easy part, in other words. The difficult questions are: what kinds of relationships—and relationship-building actions—are most helpful? Is the aphorism about students knowing you care a rationale for any and all relationship-building actions? Some students might be quite happy if you were to show up at their dance recital or stop them to chat about their home life in the hallway. Others might find this strange and even invasive. This should remind us that we can understand that relationships are important and still take steps to develop them that are counterproductive.

So, while still affirming the deep importance of relationships, here are some important observations about how to seek them most productively.

First, we are teachers to our students. We seek a specific kind of relationship that is unique to our role. Those relationships “are based on trust,” ResearchEd founder Tom Bennett wrote recently. “Trust is best built in safe calm ordered environments where adults can be relied upon to be dependable. Trust is built on predictability of action and character,” Bennett noted.²⁰ Being reliable, humane, and consistent is the center of relationships. But learners also must feel that the environment in which they learn communicates these things. When a student talks about her relationship with Ms. Smith she in some ways means Ms. Smith's classroom. She will not come to trust Ms. Smith if Ms. Smith allows her to be subtly mocked by peers when she speaks, or if Ms. Smith is unable or uninterested in making sure the time spent in her classroom feels valuable and productive. Trust for a teacher is in part an affirmation of their competence and diligence in building the right environment.

Second, successful teaching is at least as much the cause as the result of effective relationships. At a minimum the process is iterative. You demonstrate your respect for and belief in students by putting their time to good use. You show that you are worthy of their respect by creating a productive learning environment. As you do this you are warm, encouraging, and welcoming. You now have begun a relationship. It may form the foundation for a greater connection with some students; with others it will be sufficient. Chatting after class about your favorite shows with students is nice but not required and can distract you from the job at hand, teaching well, which is the primary tool by which teachers build relationships with students. “A relationship is a tool that helps students understand how to connect to the content,” Adeyemi Stembridge writes in Culturally Responsive Education in the Classroom. It's supposed to be about them and what will help them learn and thrive, in other words, and that's a key reminder because teachers' needs are also met by relationships. We can at times fall prey to wanting too much to be needed or, worse, wanting to assume that our students lack something that only we can provide.

A skeptical reader once observed about previous editions of this book: “You don't have a chapter about relationships, You must not think relationships are important.” But to me the whole book is about building relationships. A teacher who observes her students carefully, who notices and responds effectively when they struggle, and helps them see that they can be successful, is building relationships in a way that is not achieved by a teacher who gets frustrated and tells students to “figure it out.” Or even one who warmly and lovingly greets them every day but fritters away time in activities they know don't result in learning. A teacher who pushes students to work hard, to write an essay they are truly proud of, a teacher who does not have to shout at students for work to get done, a teacher who, by teaching well, builds a student's interest in and then love for a subject, builds relationships.

I recently came across a list for teachers on a popular website: “Ten Ways to Build Relationships with Students.” It included some good advice (“Apologize when you mess up”) but also some more questionable guidance: “Do crazy things,” “Talk to them about non-school-related subjects,” and “Share inspirational stories from your life.” It's worth considering whether those actions can be distractions from more important things. Talking to students about unrelated subjects is fine—some may appreciate it—but not nearly as important as talking to them about school-related subjects. Sharing inspirational stories might be fine, but proceed with caution. My own children have heard mine many, many times now and it's possible they don't find them to be quite the touchstones I do. One teacher I had in school could reliably be counted on for a twenty-minute digression if you got him going on his stories. I'm not sure how many relationships were built but his interest in telling them would reliably result in the test being pushed back by at least a day. As for doing “crazy things,” it risks as much harm as good. You're a teacher, not a performer. It makes more sense to spend your time preparing to teach really well, with warmth, humanity, attentiveness, and encouragement. The real question is whether you can inspire young people by awakening their curiosity and opening the doors of knowledge to them.

The relationship we want is at least in part a triangle, with the teacher connecting to the student about content and with the goal of inspiring them to build a relationship to the things they learn. The following illustrates how Adeyemi Stembridge expresses that.

“I'm just not sure you can say you can build relationships with students unless you teach them well,” my colleague Darryl Williams said after we watched a video in our offices one day. (I'm going to show you that video in a moment.) I went home that night and thought long and hard about that statement because at first it appeared to be false. Of course you can have good relationships with students if you don't teach well. Darryl's statement was the opposite of the oft-repeated quotation. He was suggesting that students won't know you care until they know you can teach them well.

But over time I came to see Darryl's observation operating in many of the videos in this book. In the one that prompted his comment Denarius Frazier: Remainder, Denarius circulates among students in his class giving them feedback on their math. “Killing it,” he says to one student to reaffirm her progress. “Much better,” he says to another. Consider that tiny phrase for a moment. Much better than what? Much better than the last time you attempted problems like this. What this says is: I see you as you work. Your progress is important to me. And in the case of a teacher as good as Denarius, I'm going to help you to succeed.

Denarius speaks to everyone as he works the room and he speaks to them about their academic work. Over and over, the message is I know you; I will help you. There could be flashier videos about connecting with students, but there probably aren't many more substantive videos about building relationships.²¹

Denarius's students love and respect him because of how he teaches them. This is how he builds core relationships. Fittingly, I have taken this video of Denarius from the chapter on Checking for Understanding. What that tells you is that to know and care deeply about your students' progress is relationship building and that each aspect of the core job of teaching which a teacher executes with skill, humanity and warmth forms the foundation of relationships.

Part of the argument here is about where to focus our energy. It is easy to assume that if relationships are beneficial, then the more extensive the relationship, the better. But it's not that simple. Some of us may play the role of mentor to some students in our lives—if we do, the benefit is at least half ours—but students do not need to see you as a confidant. Some students may appreciate that you care in a manner that involves chatting with them in the hallway or encouraging them to come to you with details about their personal lives and even sharing their difficulties. But plenty of them have no interest in or need for that. They are waiting for you to teach them with care and humanity. Believing that relationships start with our playing some meaningful role in students' lives other than being their teacher can distract us from the fact that classroom relationships begin with our competence as teachers.

On the first day you should smile, welcome students, and put their time to good use. As you do so, make a point of beginning to learn names. Or perhaps you've already begun this process before students arrive and can surprise them by knowing their names and how to pronounce them. Tiny moments of humanity sprinkled in—You're Damani's sister, right? How's he doing? Say hello for me!—can be powerful, but as much or more of relationship building is being prepared for class, demonstrating the capacity to help students succeed, even if they have struggled in the past, and doing that with enough skill that you can smile and encourage students. Students will be looking to see that you take their learning seriously, that you can do your job. It's hard to smile and encourage students when some are ignoring your directions or distracting you and their peers, for example. Not being able to run the room is one of the fastest ways to lose the respect of students. They may still be friendly with you, knowing your lessons are simplistic or you are easily manipulated by mischievous classmates, but those relationships are not ones that lead to learning and growth for young people.

As you teach, endeavor to show that you like your students as much as you can in simple, subtle ways. Smile, for example. As teacher and writer Jo Facer puts it, “Everything is easier when students think you like them.” But students knowing that you care about them does not mean that you are friends. Part of caring about young people will almost assuredly include setting limits or pushing them to work harder than they otherwise might. You should be as warm as you can and also expect to be strict when needed. Again, if you can build an environment where students are on task, work hard, and treat you and all of their peers with respect and appreciation, it's much easier to be positive, warm, and encouraging.

Let me try to frame this distinction with vocabulary. There are supplementary relationships—connections with certain students about their lives outside the classroom—and core relationships—positive, mutually respectful relationships in the classroom that help to ensure students' learning and growth with warmth and humanity. I am not dismissing supplementary relationships. Many teachers have played profound roles in students' lives; they can be valuable to young people and gratifying to teachers. I hope you will experience a few in your life. But it is a trap to presume that supplementary relationships are a requirement of success, when it is core relationships that do the work. Seeking the former too ardently can detract from the latter.

So what is a core relationship like? It is one in which students feel, as my colleague Dan Cotton frames it, safe, successful, and known. That is, their teacher sees them as an individual, has the competence to ensure that they will learn, and provides an environment where they need not worry.

Safe is perhaps easy to overlook when we think about relationships. It means students must not only feel like they won't be bullied or mocked but that they will be respected and appreciated. Students must be able to take intellectual risks without fearing chastisement or judgment—from you or from their peers. Their relationship is heavily influenced by their sense of belonging within the class. If you smile after a student answers and show appreciation for her thinking but allow her, within the space under your authority, to be snickered at or the subject of eye-rolling, or if the moments when she reveals her intellect are met with disinterest and silence from the class, your relationship will not likely flourish. If it does it will be a Pyrrhic victory. Successful relationships require teachers to make use of the authority vested in them to build a culture that ensures students feel safe and supported by the community. It is not just your own actions you must shape to create the conditions under which students grow and thrive. Students see this clearly. You can tell Melissa you loved her comment after class all you want. If she knows that during class she will be an object of strange curiosity every time she makes a similar comment, she will be less likely to feel the trust in you that relationships require.

Successful, as I have tried to explain throughout this chapter, derives from your overall effectiveness at the core tasks of teaching. When you do those tasks well, students see themselves progressing and succeeding, and this causes them to feel trust and appreciation. A corollary: Helping students to feel successful and to see convincing evidence of their own progress also helps to build relationships.

But what about the idea of students feeling known? Let's say you have a student. Let's call her Elicia. She'd like to know that you see her as unique, different from Candace to her left and Edward to her right. Begin by knowing her name and how she likes to say it (EE-lee-cee-ah rather than Uh-lee-sha). Use her name whenever you can: Every time you use a student's name you remind her that you know her. Perhaps you've got a couple of simple downtime questions you ask for when she and other students are first to arrive to class: Morning, Elicia. Everything go OK on the homework for you? Perhaps occasionally you even Cold Call Elicia to show that you are thinking about her experience in class. “Elicia, you feel confident at these problems?” “Elicia, were you convinced by Kennedy's argument?”

In doing these things you have begun to establish that Elicia is an individual to you—one whose opinion you care about. I had a colleague once, a math teacher, who loved to learn little details about each student and drop them into playful word problems: If Elicia loved Beyoncé he would write, “Elicia wants to build a platform for the Beyoncé statue she has created in art class. Its dimensions are …” Great, if that's you, but you don't need a bag of tricks like that. It's more important to know Elicia as a learner, to walk by her desk and say, “Don't rush, Elicia. Your last paper was good because you took your time.” Your statement shows that you remember her last paper. That you know what she is capable of. That you know and care about her progress. That you see her as an individual, in other words. This most of all is what young people crave and deserve.

A final note. Teachers who work with students who grow up in poverty should be especially careful to avoid a potential assumption that growing up with limited financial resources implies growing up impoverished in other ways—without strong social networks or parents who can support you, for example. I wish to go on record stating that of the 100 best parents and guardians I have met in my life, 99 of them have been parents who were raising their children with limited financial means, sometimes in real financial difficulty, and who provided their children with exemplary love, support, guidance, and wisdom nonetheless. Many students have people they can confide in and share their lives with, in other words. Please do not presume that they need an advocate more than they need someone to teach them chemistry. What young people need most reliably is an opportunity to learn and grow under the guidance of someone who cares about their progress in doing so. This is nonnegotiable. Do some students lack relationships in their lives and yearn for an adult who can be a confidant or a mentor? Sure, some do. These students come from every socioeconomic stratum. A few times we may meaningfully provide supplementary support for a student whose social network does not provide everything they need, but it is also easy to convince ourselves that a relationship that makes us feel important and needed is the one that most students need and this may not be the case.

So how might getting relationships right play out in the classroom? Here are some initial thoughts. You will surely find more.

The first step to relationship building, I have intimated, may be the opposite of what you expect: making your classroom an orderly place where the procedures for doing everyday things are familiar and happen as if by routine. When students also have a very clear mental model of the behaviors required in a productive classroom, it will be easier for them to do those things with at most small reminders. Further, safe, successful, and known starts with safe—that is, with a learning environment where students can struggle and will never be mocked or laughed at. Young people should be able to rely on adults to provide such a setting for them to learn in, and to provide it is a form of caring. Better for you to provide an orderly classroom where students encourage one another than to fail to do so and spend your time as the lone voice encouraging students. Further, an orderly classroom will allow you to listen to and attend to what students say and to focus on understanding each of them as a learner. Denarius's classroom is a relational place, first and foremost, because it is orderly.

Lesson planning and preparation are also critical to relationships—and again, perhaps unexpectedly so. A well-planned and well-executed lesson tells students that they matter and their learning is at the forefront. And an engaging and energetic lesson draws students in. Watch a few moments of Sadie McCleary's chemistry class at Guildford East HS in Guildford, North Carolina. Students are happy because they are busily engaged in meaningful work throughout; because when they walk in the room the chemistry lesson starts right away and has them thinking deeply and actively from the first minute. This is arguably more gratifying than walking into a classroom where a teacher spends the first five minutes asking everyone how they're doing.

In his book The Happiness Advantage, Shawn Achor reminds us that there are several parts to the concept of happiness. Accomplishment (seeing your own progress) and engagement (losing yourself in something) are critical components of happiness—as powerful as pleasure in causing happiness, even if far less often acknowledged. Further, when you know your lesson well and aren't thinking of what question to ask on the spur of the moment, you can be more responsive and observant; your working memory can be employed in perceiving how students are reacting to the work and how effective their answers are. Quite simply, you are more present.

Relationships are often based on the mastery of a dozen tiny skills from across the chapters in this book. A small element of the technique Positive Framing called Assume the Best is a game changer, for example. As with all of Positive Framing it will help you to give students the constructive feedback they deserve in a way that reminds them that you care about them and believe in them. Furthermore, it asks you to construct plausible reasons for low-level unproductivity. “Sorry, my directions weren't clear; this is a silent writing activity,” is a big improvement on “It needs to be silent in here.” It exudes calm and poise and shows students that when they don't follow direction your first instinct is to think: Well, there must be some reason for that, and it also causes you to consider and then verbalize some of these reasons, some of which will often turn out to be right. Sometimes it will just be lack of focus by the class; but sometimes you will not have been clear. When you make a habit of seeing the best in your students you are more likely to notice it when it is present. What to Do is another example. Nothing corrodes relationships like not being sure what you're supposed to be doing—times ten if it happens over and over and nobody gets much done, and times ten again if students get “spoken to” for not following a direction that's not clear to them.