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PART ONE

WHY THE RELATIONAL MINDSET?

In this part, we begin with building the narrative of relationships as the core underpinning of high-performance teaching with students from poverty. Sometimes we find it easy to connect with students who share our own background, but it becomes much more challenging with students who don’t; yet it’s essential to build relationships with those students before any real learning can happen. If you’re not connecting by giving respect, listening, and showing empathy, you risk losing your students. When students lose interest in school, they will most likely find somewhere else to invest their energy and may make poorer choices. Some will get their respect and connections through peers and sports, others through drugs or even gangs.

All of us are in this together. When your students succeed, you succeed. There is no us (teachers) and them (students). Maintaining an erroneous narrative of separation will ruin your chances of success in teaching. The relational mindset says, “We are all connected in this life together. Always connect first as a person (and an ally) and second as a teacher.”

The relational mindset says, “We are all connected in this life together. Always connect first as a person (and an ally) and second as a teacher.”

Do not confuse this mindset with me telling you that it is impossible to succeed with every student unless each likes or respects you. Some students (those from strong, intact families) come from such stability at home that they need less relationship time at school. When a student has an emotionally stable family, good friends, and positive relatives, the need for relational stability at school is less. However, those students are increasingly becoming the exception. You may know teachers with a mindset of, “I wasn’t hired to be their parent; I was hired for the content I know.” However, the more you think you are separate from your students, the worse the relationships. The more students feel separate from you, the greater the problems you’ll have with them and the greater the likelihood they’ll achieve less. Instead, ask yourself, “How can I show my students I care about their home life as well as their classroom life?”

Your students will care about academics as soon as you care about them.

A Hard Look at the Evidence

The Commission on Children at Risk (2003), a panel of thirty-three doctors, research scientists, and mental health and youth service professionals, concludes that the need to connect is hardwired. Separation is an illusion; in fact, we are mathematically connected to anyone within just six relationships (Todd & Anderson, 2009). See figure P1.1.

Figure P1.1: Interdependency builds connections.

As infants, we need to connect so critically with another human (for food, safety, clothes, shelter, and interaction) that we’ll bond with nearly any caregiver, regardless of quality (Moriceau & Sullivan, 2005). Students also want their teachers (that’s you) to offer more inclusion to integrate their personal experiences into the lessons and facilitate more interactive discussions and team-building activities (Chung-Do et al., 2013).

Effective teacher-student relationships contribute to student achievement, and this contribution varies depending on students’ socioeconomic status and grade level. The research tells us that relationships mean more to students who have instability at home than to students who have a stable, two-parent foundation (Allen, McElhaney, Kuperminc, & Jodl, 2004). Among all students, good relationships have a 0.72 effect size, which makes them an exceptionally significant and strong effect size catalyst (Hattie, 2009). Among secondary students, the effect size is an even larger 0.87 (Marzano, 2003).

Among elementary students, more so for boys than girls, kindergarten teachers’ relationships were significantly correlated with academic outcomes through middle school. In fact, teacher-student relationships are a significant predictor of student achievement even when prior levels of relationships and academic ability are taken into account (Hamre & Pianta, 2001). In addressing relationships with students from poverty, remember that a good adult relationship significantly destresses the student (Miller-Lewis et al., 2014). When students are less stressed, you get better behaviors, better cognition, and more emotional flexibility.

When teachers offer strong instructional and emotional support, students from low-income families perform equal to their higher-income peers (Hamre & Pianta, 2005). In fact, by the end of first grade, those so-called at-risk students are learning, have achievement scores, and are behaving like their nonpoor peers. By contrast, students in poverty in less-supportive classrooms have lower achievement and more conflict with teachers (Hamre & Pianta, 2005). Pause for a second and consider that high support from you can actually bring all your students to middle- and upper-income academic performance.

In fact, at every grade level, students who feel affinity for the teacher tend to engage more. This is especially true at the secondary level where students often experience feeling disconnected (Pianta, Hamre, & Allen, 2012). And, when researchers look over a period of years, students with highly supportive teachers with low levels of conflict obtain higher scores on measures of academics and behavioral adjustment than do students whose relationships with teachers are poor (Hamre & Pianta, 2006).

As you might guess, the effect size on student achievement from effective relationships is stronger for behaviorally and academically higher-risk students and for students of color than for low-risk learners (Hughes, Luo, Kwok, & Loyd, 2008; Liew, Chen, & Hughes, 2010).

In the classroom, relationships influence engagement in multiple ways. First, quality interactions within a relationship provide instruction, correction, modeling, and support for students, forming the basis of a teacher-student relationship (Hughes & Kwok, 2006). Second, a positive teacher-student relationship enhances students’ sense of classroom security and increases their willingness to engage in the classroom (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). Third, evidence shows that quality relationships can help students achieve more through greater connected engagement (Roorda, Koomen, Spilt, & Oort, 2011). Another study reveals that students’ positive or negative classroom relationships are equal to IQ or school achievement test scores in predicting if a student will drop out (Jimerson, Egeland, Sroufe, & Carlson, 2000).

Reread that last sentence. If you really want to keep students in school, build relationships! Daily, ask yourself powerful questions such as, “When other teachers successfully build quality relationships, how do they do it?” “In what ways can I connect with students that will make a difference for them?” and “How can I help students feel more safe, respected, and connected?”

A Look Ahead

The next three chapters offer the following strategies to help you build relationships with your students that will get them onboard emotionally and socially.

1. Personalize the learning.

2. Connect everyone for success.

3. Show empathy.

In these chapters, you’ll see how relationships offer the emotional environment through which all course content flows. There is no classroom content without some sort of context, even if the context is a digital device. Let’s dig in.