5 Things to Avoid When Building Positive Relationships with Your Students (And Colleagues)

• July 12, 2012, 5:35 p.m.

This is the first installment of “What Not To Do If You Want to Maximize Student Achievement” I usually try to focus on the positive, but sometimes it’s important to identify what not to do.

1. Never talk negatively about a student-- Anywhere or anytime. You just never know who is listening. Just a few words can change a life (yours and the learner's). This applies to talking negatively about other staff members as well. Use the Thumper rule (from Bambi): If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.
2. Never criticize the parents of your learners. A student teacher once told me about a teacher who received a phone call each day from a divorced mother telling how her child would go home that day. Upon hanging up with the parent, the teacher turned and said, “Your parents really need to get it together. We can’t be changing your way home everyday, especially right at dismissal time.” The child’s face just fell. I can only imagine the embarrassment this child felt.
3. Never isolate a child during instruction. I have visited classrooms where learners were placed at desks or tables by themselves, facing a wall, or in a corner. This isolation is not a temporary time out, but a permanent seating arrangement. It was very apparent to me that the teacher isolated the child due to some negative behavior. The message that this isolation sends to the student, other students, and visitors to the classroom is powerful and may be irreversible. It is worth the learner’s self-esteem to isolate them? Also, can the child see and hear instruction? Can the child participate in the lesson? Consider conferring privately with the student to set behavior goals and create an action plan. Also, try a behavior contract or a limited amount of time out.
4. Never yell or raise your voice unless safety is at risk. Yelling indicates lack of control. I can’t think of a single time in my life when I yelled or was yelled at that turned out to have a positive learning outcome. I do have vivid memories of teachers who yelled, but these are not positive memories.
5. Never favor one student over others. Everyone knows when this is happening and it is detrimental to the culture of the class. While you can’t change how you feel about students or their parents, you can control how you treat them.

Reference: The Art and Science of Teaching, by Robert Marzano, 2007, ASCD

Happy teaching,
Kelly Harmon