Back to School: Teacher Student Relationship
Students spend a significant amount of their time at school interacting with teachers. While teachers play an important role in students’ learning, their relationships with students can be just as important. Students, teachers, parents, principals, and education researchers have identified the ability to connect with students as an important quality of effective teachers. In fact, qualities such as compassion, trust, patience, caring, and kindness are viewed as especially important in building these connections.
Positive teacher–student relationships have been associated with greater academic achievement, more prosocial and less antisocial behavior, and greater satisfaction with school. These relationships may be particularly valuable for students experiencing social, emotional, or academic challenges.
What Makes a Positive Teacher–Student Relationship?
Building a positive relationship is about more than simply being “nice” to students. Students tend to respect and prefer teachers who are kind, caring, and responsive to their needs, while also providing structure within the classroom. Students value teachers who have high expectations, provide help when needed, establish fair rules and consequences, and focus on preventing behavioral problems rather than only responding once they occur.
Finding a balance between support and structure is important. An authoritative approach combines responsiveness, including warmth, caring, respect, and kindness, with clear expectations, routines, and fair consequences. Together, these practices can create an orderly and positive classroom environment that supports both learning and student well-being.
When Building Connections Becomes Difficult
There are two sides to every teacher–student relationship, and challenges on either side can make it more difficult to connect. Students who display aggressive, defiant, disrespectful, or disobedient behaviors may have greater difficulty developing positive relationships with their teachers. Internalizing concerns, including anxiety, depression, and shyness, can also make it harder for students and teachers to connect.
Teachers have their own experiences that can affect these relationships as well. Stress, anger, burnout, and depressive symptoms can make connecting with students more difficult. A lack of school resources and support staff, including school psychologists, counselors, and social workers, can create additional challenges when teachers and students need support the most.
Building Stronger Relationships in the Classroom
Small, intentional interactions can help teachers build and maintain stronger relationships with their students. Some recommendations include:
Balance warmth with structure: Maintain high expectations and clear routines while also showing students kindness, respect, patience, and support.
Model positive relationships: Demonstrate the caring, fairness, empathy, and respect that you want students to show toward others.
Get to know your students: Learn about students’ interests, preferences, talents, skills, families, and backgrounds.
Let students get to know you:When appropriate, sharing interests, hobbies, and experiences can help students find similarities and build connections with their teachers.
Make time for individual interactions: Even brief conversations about a student’s weekend, family, sports, or interests can communicate that their teacher cares about them.
Create opportunities to communicate: Let students know when and how they can speak with you individually, especially when they need support.
Use praise and positive feedback: Recognizing positive behaviors can help create a more positive classroom climate and strengthen how students perceive their teacher.
Give students a sense of autonomy: When possible, provide choices and respect students’ viewpoints rather than making interactions feel overly controlling.
Use humor and have fun: Appropriate humor, games, novelty, and other enjoyable activities can help make the classroom a more positive place to learn.
Maintaining the Relationship When Problems Arise
Positive relationships do not mean that teachers should ignore misbehavior or avoid setting limits. Students tend to respect teachers who establish fair expectations and consequences, particularly when they understand why a correction is necessary.
When correcting behavior, teachers can help protect the relationship by remaining calm, being firm but supportive, and correcting students privately when possible. It is also important to separate the student from the behavior. Communicating that a behavior was unacceptable does not have to communicate that the student is unacceptable. Teachers can recognize positive behavior, encourage students to consider how their actions affect others, involve them in developing ways to prevent the behavior from happening again, and communicate optimism that they can improve.
If a relationship has already become negative or conflictual, teachers can also reflect on their own interactions with the student. Considering differences in praise, attention, body language, tone of voice, and responses to behavior may help identify patterns that are unintentionally contributing to the conflict.
Teachers and Parents Working Together
Relationships with families can also support the teacher–student relationship. Establishing positive communication with parents before problems occur can show families that the teacher cares about their child and wants to work together to support their success.
Positive notes, phone calls, messages, or conversations about what a student is doing well can help establish this relationship early. When behavioral concerns do occur, an existing partnership can make it easier for teachers and parents to work together to support the student.
Creating Connection at School
A positive teacher–student relationship can be built through everyday moments. Greeting a student, listening when they need support, asking about an interest, recognizing their progress, or taking a few moments to connect individually may seem small, but these interactions can communicate an important message.
For students experiencing academic, social, emotional, or behavioral challenges, these connections may be especially valuable. By combining support with structure and making intentional efforts to know, encourage, and listen to students, teachers can create relationships that support both student well-being and learning.
