Student-Teacher Relationship: What a Novice Teacher Should Know
Novice teachers are always worried about the ways of maintaining perfect relationship with their students. We as teachers encounter various school culture and circumstances which openly challenge our theoretical college education. During pre-service education, someone hardly get conceptualized the actual classroom environment. Neither the thick books loaded with theories and principals nor our professors/teachers educates us about practical classroom environment. Then, we realize a kind of disconnection. Such trend in teacher education causes psychological distress to the novice teachers during their early career.
Once they enter into the gate of school, teachers have to come across issues like learners differences, societal difference and different school culture (a constituent of thoughts, beliefs, ideologies, and values that guides the operation of school).
Different societies have different expectations. Their expectations are guided by their needs, experience, and circumstances. Being a teacher, one has to know the guardians/social expectations, which is not so easy task. It takes long duration. Guardians’ expectations and our beliefs sometimes clash. In this regard I put my experience here.
Every time I visit my children’s guardians what I found is, they want their children to be afraid of their teachers. Contrary, I don’t want to make my children afraid of me I would rather love to have fun with them. They can negotiate learning enjoying with teachers too. I still remember my childhood when I would hide myself from my teachers so that they could not notice me. To be more concise, I would afraid of my teachers and so did my friends. Today I understand, the belief that I had about my teacher was completely wrong. And the saddest thing is that our society called that paying respect to the teachers. Not being able to interact with my teachers is the DIFINITION of respect? Being afraid of teachers can make anyone GOOD LEARNER? Instilling the wrong thought about teachers can make anyone GOOD CIVIC?
Teacher-Student relationship matters?
The term RELATIONSHIP can be defined variously. It can be both positive and negative. But in this blog we are talking about the relationship between teacher and students that allows quality learning. A teacher-student relationship is more important than the theories and the teaching methods we learnt in our college.
Those students who have close, positive and supportive relationship with their teachers will attain higher level of achievement than those students with more conflict in their relationship.https://www.apa.org/education-career/k12/relationships
Then, the question is, What kind of relation supports learning environment? What relation ensures the self-esteem of both students and teachers? Every talks about the benefits of good student-teacher relationship as like; promotes effective learning, makes teachers aware of students expectations, makes easier to motivate and encourage students, supports professional growth etc. But little talk about how maintaining the perfect relationship between teacher and students is heard. And very little discourse about what is the limitation of the relationship is found. Here are some points that can help novice teachers to maintain proper relationship with their students.
How to Maintain Good Student-Teacher Relationship
- A novice teacher should know that loving his students and being kind to them may not always foster effective result. It doesn’t mean being rude all the time. A good teacher always understands the circumstance and acts accordingly.
- Be aware that you are a model to the children. They are learning behaviors and emotions form you. Therefore, be an example to them. Never take part in immoral and asocial activities.
- Manage your anger and emotions in the classroom. Don’t be personal. Share your thoughts/stories only when they are imitable and impactful.
- Love them but do not cuddle your students, especially in senior grades. Maintain a thin line gap relationship so that they follow your commands.
- Do not make your student too much dependent on you. Guide them to be autonomous learner. You can facilitate learning.
- Never bias, treat and respect everyone equally.
- Remember, the young learners make develop attitude towards school looking at their relation with teachers.
- Be able to evaluate students’ discomfort, loneliness, and relation with other students.
- Know your student and give proper feedback.
Positive student-teacher relationship encourages students come to school. It makes students feel comfortable in classroom. In order to develop a good learning environment it is necessary to establish an appropriate relationship with students.
Just as students have different learning styles, personalities and intelligences, their preferences differ. A teacher should develop good rapport to understand the preferences of students.
-Shiva Ram Paudel
