Relationship Mapping in the Classroom

Being intentional about your relationships with your students can help trust flourish. We love this article and its highly practical suggestions for relationship building with students. Here’s a summary from us.

✏ 1. Using highlighters and a class list, identify how close you are now to the students you teach. Is your relationship currently distant (L1), transactional (L2), personal (L3), or deep (L4)?

✏ 2. Make a plan to ask questions that intentionally and appropriately let you build a deeper teacher-student relationship. The questions linked below are great ones adapted for students. We'd use them at the beginning and ending of lessons or while on lunch duty (canteen queues can be boring!). They would work well in tutor/pastoral/advisory times as well.

✏ 3. Use your classroom seating to help L1 or L2 students see what a deepening relationship with you looks like. Let them see how safe it is.

✏ 4. Celebrate and focus on appropriate sharing both verbally and visually by having a "refrigerator door" space.

A big thanks to Michael Iannini for sharing this article by Cathleen Beachboard. We had never heard the term "relationship mapping" and now we love it!

✏ What has worked for you to build stronger relationships with students?