Relationships by: Connor Grady

Another year.  Some of us are readily awaiting it.  Others are dreading it. Despite having been at my school for a whole year now, there are still plenty of students in my grade with whom I’ve never so much as exchanged a glance.  As for teachers, each new class is almost certain to introduce new people to act as my mentors for the rest of the year. This is likely the same for many other students across America this August.  Our relationship with these people, whether we like it or not, is going to shape our educational experience throughout the course of the 2018-19 school year.

It can be difficult, and admittedly daunting, to go out and seek relationships with people you don’t know.  Especially in high school. To start of this year, capitalizing on my retrospect of last year’s successes and shortcomings, I want to revise my previous suggestions regarding the first days of school.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that students naturally expect teachers to be distant.  Commonly, this distance comes in the form of a lack of interest (or ability) to get to know all of their students personally.  However, the lesser known twin of this distance, overzealousness, can be just as damaging to a teacher’s rapport with their students.  I’m sure that many of the teachers reading this post are genuinely interested in making their classroom environment the best place to learn.  If this is the case, the question must be asked; why are ice-breakers the standard for building relationships? Ice-breakers are the epitome of this distant/overzealous disconnect between students and staff.  If the activity clearly displays that the teacher’s objective is to gain the compliance of their students in class, then the ice-breaker fails. Similarly, if the teacher seems too excited (or even falsely so) then the activity can feel invasive and ingenuine.  To make the best use of your class time, the genuine interest of the teacher must be to better know their students. They want to feel that the teacher respects them as individual and intelligent people, rather than opinionless vessels of learning.

These first days of school, and the relationships founded in them, are the most important days of the year.  Teachers must initiate the respect that they hope to gain from their students throughout the academic year.