Building relationships with students can be a straightforward and rewarding way to ensure success in the classroom.
Student success is all about connections. Whether it’s a student’s connection to their family life, a family’s connection to the school, or the school’s connection to each student, those relationships can be a defining factor in a great school year.
In most cases, it all starts with the teacher-student relationship, as trustworthy and engaging teachers can motivate their students toward hard work and academic growth, and away from negative behavior and learning loss. Use tips from seasoned educators when learning how to build relationships with students to make a positive impact in your students’ lives, prevent classroom disruptions, and contribute toward a strong school culture that motivates everyone to do their very best.
Table of Contents
1. Start building relationships with students early
The first day of school is full of excitement, nervousness, and lots of important tasks. But it’s also your first opportunity to start building community in the classroom, whether it’s with getting-to-know-you activities, team-building projects, or meet-the-teacher ideas.
Use those precious first few days to foster a sense of belonging in the classroom. Have students help create the list of rules, and assign jobs to give students ownership over their space (or if you’re teaching older grades, give them some say in your seating chart). Building relationships with students early helps you reach them right from the beginning and creates trust that goes both ways.
Find out more about your students on the first day
Need first-day-of-school activities to get students engaged right away? Use resources that ask them about themselves, including writing prompts, surveys, and interview assignments, and help them start the year by teaching you!
First Week Building Relationships Activity: Student Interest Questionnaire
By Teaching Intentionally with Savannah Kepley
Grades: 6th-12th
Subjects: English Language Arts, Writing
Build relationships with your students from day one with a questionnaire all about them. An editable resource includes engaging questions and prompts for students new to your class, and it comes in a Google Form, Google Doc, or PDF version for your sharing needs.
2. Learn (and use) their names
It sounds too simple to be true, but strong student-teacher relationships can start with a name. Learning student names quickly is a subtle yet powerful way to show that you care about addressing each person in your class as an individual, which can be a welcome departure from “Hello, boys and girls!”
To begin building relationships with students, add pictures to your seating chart or have students wear name tags until you’ve got them all memorized. Then, stand outside your classroom as they enter and greet each student individually with their preferred name. When students know that you know them, they’re less likely to try to disappear in the classroom and more likely to see you as someone on their side.
Memorize their names with easy tools and resources
Whether you’ve got 20 kindergartners or 180 high school students, memorizing student names at the beginning of the year can be tricky. Use these resources to master student names ASAP, and to bring them into the classroom culture in no time at all.
Back to School Name Tents | Relationship Building Activity | Back to School Idea
By Stephanie Nash – A Touch of Class Teaching
Grades: 2nd-12th
Subject: Classroom Community
Imagine knowing your students’ names right when you look at them! Turn the dream into a reality with a back-to-school resource that includes editable, ready-to-print name tent templates. Choose a design for your class or let students choose their own designs to express their personality.
3. Find out what motivates them
Learning what motivates your students is a key part of building relationships with them, as it makes their classroom duties less arbitrary, more directed, and even more meaningful. For some students, it’s table points. For others, it’s compliments and notes home.
Set up a surefire motivation and reward system
Host a class survey for students to note what motivation system they’ve liked in the past, or have a class discussion about how they’re best motivated to finish their work and engage in the classroom. Try to incorporate the system they like best, whether it’s classroom dollars, more free time, homework passes, or even time on the bean bag chair (our personal favorite!). And if one system doesn’t work, try, try again!
Student Interest Inventory Reward Menus & Behavior Reinforcement Surveys
By Counselor Station
Grades: K-5th
Subject: School Counseling, School Psychology
How do you build relationships with students if you don’t know what’s important to them? Find out your students’ ideal motivation systems with a resource that includes a student survey, printable visual task cards, yes/no sorting mats, and details for use in various classroom settings.
4. Attend extracurricular events
Do you have some soccer stars in your classroom, or masterful musicians? Who is entering an art show this weekend, and who is preparing for a big equestrian event? Learn more about your students’ extracurricular events through class discussions, journal prompts, or casual conversations, and then take it a step further by attending any events you can.
Pro Tip: TPT Teacher-Author Leigh from The Applicious Teacher recommends checking in with students every morning. “It allowed me to know when special events occurred or what was happening at home. The whole process only took about 10 minutes, but it helped me ‘know’ my students on a personal level and allowed me to show that I truly care about them as not only a student but as a person.”
5. Address all learning styles
Visual learners, auditory learners, kinesthetic learners, and social learners all have one thing in common: They’re all in your classroom. Modify your curriculum to address as many learning styles as you can, enabling more students to access your instruction and making them feel seen whenever you begin to teach.
It could be as simple as turning the captions on when showing a video, providing both written and verbal instructions to an assignment, or allowing students to consult with each other before working on classwork. These simple steps can go a long way toward building relationships with students and showing them that their contributions are valuable to the classroom community.
6. Know when to be lenient
It’s tricky to find the balance between being a teacher who holds boundaries and the “easy A” teacher. But when it comes to showing students a moment of kindness, the line gets a lot less confusing—and it can mean the world to them.
Teachers who work on building positive relationships with students know that some members of their class just need a break. It could be an extended deadline, extra credit opportunities, or taking a low test score out of their final grade. A moment of leniency in an otherwise hectic school year shows students you care about their experience more than you care about being a stickler.
7. Keep parent communication positive
When setting up a parent-teacher communication plan, teachers often intend to reach out with positive messages or exciting moments of growth. But with the everyday hustle of the school environment, these plans may fall by the wayside, and soon all parent-teacher communication revolves around undesirable classroom behavior or missing homework.
Parents don’t like receiving those calls and notes (and teachers don’t like sending them). Get ahead of classroom issues with positive communication to caretakers, whether it’s quick “Caught being good” notes or calls about a student’s recent successes. You’ll strengthen the student’s learning team and show that you care about them doing well in your class.
Send positive notes home to stay in touch with parents
If you want to set up a parent-teacher communication system but just don’t have the time, use positive note templates for quick reach-out moments. You can print them up early and have them on hand, making it easy to hand one to students on their way out the door!
Positive Behavior Notes To Send Home To Parents | Classroom Management Editable
By Mr. Napoles
Grades: PreK-6th
Subject: Classroom Community
Let parents know how well their students are doing in your class with a collection of easy-to-use positive parent note templates. Each one includes a space for the student’s name and date, a checklist of positive behaviors, and extra room for additional notes from the teacher.
8. Monitor social-emotional health
Teachers who build strong relationships with their students know that academic education isn’t the only type of learning happening in the classroom. Social-emotional learning and mental health moments occur every day with your students, and by infusing your day with regular SEL check-ins, you can show them that you’re in their corner.
Use SEL and emotion-based language in your classroom, and model it by telling your students how you’re feeling each day. Host morning meetings, provide SEL journal prompts, and encourage students to monitor their own feelings and difficult moments, as well as their moments of success. When students know that you’re aware of their struggles and don’t judge them, they’ll trust you and open up more.
Help students keep track of their moods and emotions
The answer to “How are you feeling?” may not be as simple for some students as others. Help them understand their moods and emotions with tracking tools made for multiple grades, and foster social-emotional communication throughout your classroom community.
EDITABLE How Are You Feeling Today? Social/Emotional Student Check-In
By Miss Clark’s Spoonful
Grades: PreK-6th
Subject: Social Emotional Learning
Guide students toward a better understanding of their own mental health with a resource that combines taking attendance with SEL check-ins. When students walk into class, they place their names on a chart that details several feelings, including “angry,” “excited,” “sad,” and “helpful.”
9. Strengthen student relationships with the school community
A report for the Review of Educational Research showed that a positive school climate often depended on factors such as the strength of students’ relationships with school staff and administrators, and researchers found substantial evidence that positive school climates contribute to academic achievement and can improve outcomes for students.
For example, an elementary school in Colorado focuses on a different value every month, like respect or perseverance. When a student excels at that value, they get to tell their family alongside their principal. Principal Kristin Golden told Chalkbeat, “The student gets a chance to speak with family about his or her accomplishments [. . .]. Parents are thrilled to be receiving a positive call from [the] school.”
How to Tell if You Have Strong Relationships with Students
We know that a positive school climate improves academic performance, which is good news for everyone in a student’s life. So, how do you know if you’re building relationships with students successfully? The evidence is right there in the classroom. You know you’re on the right track to a strong relationship with students when they:
- Openly communicate and engage in class
- Ask you for help on assignments, school-related issues, or other problems
- Have high attendance rates and enjoy being at school
- Share their interests and activities with you
- Happily collaborate with peers and groups
- Have a cheerful, positive attitude in the classroom
On the contrary, if you see the negative sides of these traits (such as not engaging in class, having low attendance rates, or not asking for help when they need it), you may want to put more focus on building and repairing those relationships. You may be one of the only people in their lives to reach out in this way, and a small amount of effort could make a huge difference.
The Connection Between School Culture and Success
It doesn’t take 20 years of experience to begin building relationships with students. Student teachers, new teachers, and seasoned teachers alike can use relationship-building resources to strengthen the connections they have with students, parents, and colleagues, which brings everyone into the same student-focused conversation. And when you feel more connected with your students, the teaching profession feels even more rewarding, no matter how long you’ve been in the classroom.
Looking for more ways to improve school culture for the benefit of students and teachers alike? Try questions first-year teachers could ask veteran teachers to optimize your classroom routines and ensure that students have all the tools they need to be successful.
