Relationships Unlock Learning
Part of my routine each week is popping into three or four classes. I sit off to the side – usually quietly, but sometimes I can’t help but join the fun. Those visits allow me to commend our extraordinary teachers and get a better feel for the students’ day-to-day experience.
Those visits are also a good reminder of how important relationships are to learning. There’s a common aphorism that students don’t learn from people they don’t like. While I might quibble with the phrasing and choose to substitute “like” for respect, admire, and trust, it does hint at a series of findings from decades of research about how kids learn best. Feeling seen, known, and loved by your teacher opens the door to learning. It creates a sense of emotional comfort and belonging. It allows students to make mistakes, admit what they don’t know, and ask for help without shame or fear of being discovered. In those classrooms, teachers can set high expectations and students want to meet them. Teachers can share their passion for a subject, and students get swept up in that passion. David Brooks wrote about these ideas in his 2019 New York Times opinion piece titled “Students Learn from People They Love.”
Just this fall, I saw so many ways teachers create that environment at bbin娱乐平台. I heard a classics teacher share a story of feeling particularly challenged in graduate school and the associated worry about underperforming – a moment of vulnerability that invited students to do the same. I observed an art teacher walking around from student to student offering one-on-one coaching – saying just enough to help the students take the next step and giving them the tools and confidence to do it themselves. I heard a science teacher share a fun childhood story to illustrate a tricky molecular concept. A music teacher in chorus riffing on the way that Spanish composers broke rules and the associated music-theory niceties. A math teacher offering, “You guys came up with a neat approach I hadn’t thought of.” A classics teacher making a Star Wars joke about Tataouine and its multiple suns to shed light on (sorry) the singular vs. plural ending to a noun.
I could go on. As Thanksgiving approaches, please join me in thanking our teachers for being the people our students deserve.